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By  Guglietmo  Ferrero 


The  Greatness  and  Decline  of  Rome 

In  Five  Volumes 

Vol.      I. — ^The  Empire  Builders 

Vol.  II. — Julius  Cesar 

Vol.  III. — The  Fall  of  an  Aristocracy 

Vol.  IV. — Rome  and  Egypt 

Vol.  V. — The  Republic  of  Augustus 

Characters  and  Events  in  Roman  History 

From  Caesar  to  Nero  (60  B.C.-70  A.D.) 

Ancient  Rome  and  Modern  America 

A  Comparative  Study  of  Morals  and  Manners 

Between  the  Old  World  and  the  New 

A  Moral  and  Philosophical  Contrast 

A  Short  History  of  Rome 

In  Two   Volumes 

Problems  of  Peace  in  Europe 


A    SHORT    HISTORY 
OF    ROME 


BY 
GUGLIELMO  FERRERO 

AND 

CORRADO  BARBAGALLO 


THE    EMPIRE 

FROM    THE    DEATH  OF    CAESAR  TO  THE    FALL 
OF   THE    WESTERN    EMPIRE 


4.4  B.C.-476  A.D. 


G.   P.   PUTNAM'S   SONS 

NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 

Zbe     •RnicRerbochcr     prcea 

1919 


Cori'RIGHT,     1919 
BY 

GUGLIELMO    FERRERO 


Translated  from  the  Italian  by 
GEORGE  CHRYSTAL 


Ubc  ftniciitrbocficr  prcM,  t\ew  tier}> 


f4 


PAGE 


CONTENTS 
CHAPTER   I 

The  Third  Civil  War  (44-42  b.c.)  i 

CHAPTER   II 

The    Vicissitudes    and    the    Fall   of   the 

Triumvirate 37 

CHAPTER   III 

The  Augustan  Republic      ....       66 

CHAPTER   IV 

The  Struggle  for  the  Succession  of  Augus- 
tus       .......     102 

CHAPTER   V 

Tiberius  (14-37  a.d.)  .        .         .118 

CHAPTER   VI 

Caligula  and  Claudius  (37-54  a.d.)     ,  153 

CHAPTER   VII 

Nero  .         .         .         .         •         •         •         .184 


9760G 


iv  Contents 

CHAPTER   VIII 

PACE 

The  First  Great  Crisis  in  the  History  of 

THE  Empire  .....     227 

CHAPTER   IX 

The  Flavians  (69-96  a.d.)   ....     244 

CHAPTER   X 

The    Republic    of    Trajan    and    the    Last 

Splendours  of  the  Roman  Spirit  .     266 

CHAPTER   XI 
Hadrian,  the  Great  Reformer  (i  17-138  a.d.)      284 

CHAPTER   XII 

The  Climax  of  Prosperity  and  the  Begin- 
nings   OF    Decline — from    Antoninus 

PlUSTODlDIUSjULIANUS  (138-193  A.D.)  31O 

CHAPTER   XIII 

The  Absolute  Monarchy  :  Septimius  Severus 

(193-21 1  A.D.) 334 

CHAPTER   XIV 

The  Great  Crisis   in  the  Third  Century 

(211-284  A.D.) 350 

CHAPTER   XV 

The  Reforms  of  Diocletian  (284-305  a.d.)      .     384 


PACE 


Contents 

CHAPTER    XVI 
CONSTANTINE    THE    GREAT    (306-337  A.D.)  403 

CHAPTER    XVn 

The    Great     Religious     Struggles     (337- 

363  A.D.) 429 

CHAPTER   XVin 

The  Invasion  Resumed  (363-393  a.d.)  451 

CHAPTER   XIX 

The  Catastrophe  (395-476  a.d.)  ,  469 

Index  .......  493 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  ROME 


CHAPTER   I 

THE   THIRD   CIVIL   WAR 
(44-42    B.C.) 

I.  The  Amnesty  of  March  17th,  and  the  Con- 
firmation of  Caesar's  Acts.  Caesar  had  been  assas- 
sinated on  the  morning  of  March  15th.  In  Rome  his 
death  made  as  it  were  a  great  void.  The  senate  fled 
in  terror.  Cesar's  colleague  in  the  consulship,  Marcus 
Antonius,  shut  himself  up  in  his  house  fearing  lest  the 
conspirators  intended  that  he  should  share  the  fate  of 
his  friend.  The  conspirators  threw  themselves  into 
the  Capitol  and  fortified  themselves  there.  During 
the  whole  of  March  15th  the  city  was  left  entirely  to 
itself. 

It  was  not  until  towards  evening  that  Antony,  who 
had  been  joined  by  Lepidus,  Ceesar's  magister  equittim, 
ventured  to  leave  his  house  and  visit  the  domus 
publica  where  he  took  possession  of  the  dictator's 
papers  and  money,  while  the  conspirators,  on  their 
part,  were  endeavouring  to  get  into  touch  with  the 
more  important  members  of  the  senate.     On  the  fol- 


2  The  Third  Civil  War 

lowing  day,  the  i6th,  the  activity  of  both  parties  in- 
creased. Ceesar's  soldiers  and  veterans,  instigated  by 
Antony,  began  to  collect  together  and  become  tur- 
bulent. The  leading  personages  of  the  dictator's 
party  gathered  round  Antony,  those  of  the  senatorial 
party,  including  the  conspirators,  round  Cicero.  In 
both  camps  there  were  long  discussions,  and  negotia- 
tions between  the  parties  were  commenced  but  led 
to  no  result.  Meanwhile  many  of  the  troops  and 
many  veterans,  having  heard  the  news  of  the  assas- 
sination, flocked  into  the  city  from  the  surrounding 
country.  In  the  evening,  as  it  was  found  impossible 
to  arrive  at  an  agreement  between  the  Ca?sarians  and 
the  conspirators,  it  was  agreed  to  refer  the  matter  to  the 
senate  which  was  convoked  by  Antony  and  met  on 
the  morning  of  the  17th  in  the  temple  of  Dea  Tellus. 
The  senators  proceeded  to  the  meeting-place  between 
two  lines  of  soldiers  stationed  by  Antony  for  the  pur- 
pose, as  he  said,  of  maintaining  order.  Behind  these 
lines  thronged  the  crowd  of  Caesar's  veterans,  the 
remains  of  Clodius's  old  collegia  resuscitated  for  the 
occasion,  and  the  humbler  ranks  of  the  populace  whom 
the  soldiers  and  Caesar's  friends  had  on  the  previous 
days  done  their  best  to  excite  against  the  conspirators. 
The  sitting  was  long.  The  question  the  senate  had 
to  decide  was  this: — Were  the  conspirators  to  be  re- 
garded as  assassins  and  therefore  to  be  brought  to 
trial  as  the  extreme  partisans  of  Caesar  desired?  Or, 
on  the  other  hand,  was  Caesar  to  be  considered  a  tyrant 
who  had  richly  deserved  his  fate;  and  were  his  mur- 
derers to  be  rewarded  as  liberators  of  their  country  as 
their  ardent  supporters  contended?  The  conspira- 
tors, partly  from  fear  of  the  veterans  and  partly  owing 
to  their  distrust  of  Antony,  had  abstained  from  attend- 


Amnesty  of  March  lyth  and  CcEsars  Acts     3 

ing  the  sitting.  It  immediately  appeared,  however, 
that  the  majority  of  the  senate  was  favourable,  and 
openly  favourable,  to  them,  and  consequently  en- 
tirely averse  from  the  first  of  the  two  alternatives 
before  the  House.  Csesar  had  struck  too  hard  at  the 
interests  and  had  too  deeply  injured  the  susceptibili- 
ties of  the  aristocracy  for  it  to  be  otherwise.  But  the 
senate  was  somewhat  chary  of  adopting  the  other 
alternative,  and  in  this  attitude  they  were  confirmed 
by  the  tempestuous  murmurings  and  the  cries  of  the 
crowd  outside  which,  as  time  passed,  began  more  and 
more  loudly  and  vehemently  to  invoke  curses  on  the 
heads  of  Ceesar's  murderers.  In  the  middle  of  the 
debate  came  a  clever  speech  from  Antony  who  in  these 
early  days  must  have  shown  himself  a  very  different 
person  from  the  caricature  which  Cicero  was  soon  to 
hand  down  to  posterity  in  the  Philippics.  Antony 
observed  that  the  damnatio  memoricE  of  Caesar  which 
had  been  proposed  and  threatened  would  entail  the 
rescission  of  all  his  acts.  Consequently  the  senate 
would  be  decimated;  several  of  the  magistrates 
designate  would  lose  their  rank;  the  lands  which  Caesar 
had  given  or  sold  would  revert  to  their  former  posses- 
sors; the  reforms  he  had  carried  out  in  Italy,  in  the 
provinces,  or  in  the  colonies  would  be  annulled  and 
likewise  all  the  promises  he  had  made,  for  instance 
those  affecting  his  veterans.  Was  it  possible  that  the 
senate  really  wished  to  decree  such  a  universal  up- 
heaval, and  to  raise  against  them  so  formidable  a  co- 
alition of  interests  which  would  unite  their  natural 
enemies  with  all  their  lukewarm  friends  and  sym- 
pathizers? 

The  fact  was  that  not  a  few  of  the  conspirators  owed 
their  fortunes  to  Caesar.     The  perplexity  of  the  senate 


4  The  Third  Civil  War 

was,  therefore,  great  and  the  discussion  dragged  on  in 
uncertainty  and  confusion  until  Cicero  found  the  solu- 
tion of  the  problem  by  proposing  the  adoption  of  a 
judicial  institution  known  as  the  amnesty,  which  had 
been  invented  by  the  Athenians,  and  which  meant 
that  both  sides  should  reciprocally  forget  and  forgive 
all  that  had  been  done  contrary  to  the  law.  Cicero 
in  short  proposed  on  the  one  hand  that  the  assassina- 
tion of  the  dictator  should  not  be  regarded  as  a  crime 
and  that  no  one  should  be  permitted  to  bring  any 
accusation  relating  to  his  murder,  and  on  the  other 
hand  that  his  acts,  not  merely  those  which  had  already 
been  made  public  and  had  taken  effect,  but  all  the 
others  that  might  be  found  indicated  in  his  papers 
should,  if  reduced  to  official  form,  and  if  performed 
in  virtue  of  the  powers  conferred  on  Caesar  by  the 
senate  and  the  comitia,  be  regarded  as  valid.  This 
proposal  was  approved  and  in  the  evening  the  con- 
spirators, protected  by  the  immunity  which  had  been 
so  opportunely  granted  to  them,  were  able,  after  much 
trepidation,  to  come  down  from  the  Capitol  in  which 
for  three  days  they  had  been  barricaded  as  refugees, 
to  return  in  safety  (so  at  least  they  thought)  to  their 
domestic  hearths,  and  to  take  part  in  the  affairs  of  the 
country. ' 

2.  The  Funeral  of  Caesar.  The  sitting  of  the 
senate  on  March  17th,  if  it  had  not  given  a  decisive 
victory  to  the  group  of  irreconcilable  Cassarians,  had 
at  all  events  proved  that  the  conspirators  who  had 

'  On  the  events  of  these  three  days  cf.  G.  Ferrero,  The  Greatness 
and  Decline  of  Rome,  London  and  New  York,  1908;  vol.  iii.. 
Appendix  A.  Appendix  A  contains  a  minute  analysis  of  the 
authorities  bearing  on  these  events  and  on  the  critical  recon- 
struction of  what  happened. 


Funeral  of  Ccesar  5 

killed  the  dictator  were  compelled  to  respect  his  work. 
Any  other  course  was  barred  by  the  vested  interests 
constituted  by  the  civil  war  and  by  the  dictatorship. 
It  is,  therefore,  easy  to  understand  why  the  Caesarians 
took  courage  at  the  next  meeting  of  the  senate,  which 
was  held  probably  on  the  19th,'  and  raised  the  ques- 
tion of  the  funeral  of  their  dead  leader.  Piso,  Caesar's 
father-in-law,  contended  that  his  obsequies  should  be 
public,  like  those  of  all  eminent  citizens.  This  was  a 
serious  demand.  To  decree  that  Caesar  should  have 
a  public  funeral  was  to  admit  that  his  death  was  a 
public  affliction.  And  how  was  it  possible  to  com- 
mend the  murder  of  a  citizen  whose  death  was  recog- 
nized to  be  a  misfortune  for  the  State?  The  good 
sense  of  many  of  the  conspirators  and  Cassius's 
practical  mind  perceived  the  danger,  and  they  tried  to 
put  a  stop  to  the  plan.  But  on  the  other  hand  how 
could  this  honour  be  denied  to  a  man  who  had  filled 
so  many  offices,  against  whom,  while  he  lived,  no  kind 
of  charge  had  been  brought,  and  whose  political  work 
had  been  approved  and  confirmed  after  his  death  by 
the  whole  senate?  The  more  moderate  opinion,  fin- 
ally adopted  by  the  ever  extremely  simple-minded 
Marcus  Brutus,  therefore  prevailed.  It  was  decided 
that  Cassar  should  have  a  public  funeral. 

The  day,  so  much  desired  and  so  much  dreaded, 
which  must  have  been  between  March  20th  and  March 
23rd,  came  at  last.  In  the  first  place,  Caesar's  will 
had  been  made  known.  In  it  he  adopted  as  his  son 
and  made  heir  to  the  greater  part  of  his  private  fortune 
his  nephew  Caius  Octavius,  and  designated  as  second- 
ary and  eventual  heirs  certain  of  his  own  murderers. 
The  principal  heir  was  bound  by  a  trust  to  distribute 

'  Cf.  Ihne,  Romische  Geschichte,  Leipzig,  1898;  vol.  vii.,  p.  265. 


6  The  Third  Civil  War 

120  or  300  sesterces  to  every  poor  citizen  of  Rome. 
He  bequeathed  for  the  use  of  the  public  his  immense 
gardens  situate  beyond  the  Tiber,  together  with  the 
collection  of  works  of  art  therein.  During  his  lifetime, 
Caesar  had  done  greater  things,  but  perhaps  no  act  of 
his  ever  made  so  lively  an  impression  on  the  lower 
ranks  of  the  Roman  people  as  his  liberality,  and  the 
aflection  for  so  many  of  his  murderers,  to  which  his 
will  bore  witness. 

The  soldiers,  the  veterans,  and  the  Roman  populace 
were  more  and  more  deeply  agitated;  they  lamented 
more  and  more  deeply  the  death  of  the  dictator;  they 
invoked  curses  on  his  murderers  with  greater  and 
greater  fury  and  thus,  on  the  day  of  the  funeral,  the 
forum,  the  temples  and  the  adjacent  monuments  were 
invaded  by  an  agitated  and  excited  crowd  ready 
for  violence,  vengeance  and  destruction.  The  ivory 
bier,  covered  with  a  purple  pall  edged  with  gold,  on 
which  Caesar  was  sleeping  his  last  sleep  was  borne  on 
the  shoulders  of  magistrates  and  ex-magistrates  who 
had  been  friends  of  the  departed.  Before  it,  like  a 
trophy,  was  carried  the  blood-stained  robe  and  behind 
followed  a  long  train  of  veterans,  freedmen,  and  ar- 
tisans, while  through  the  funeral  dirges  repeatedly 
resounded  a  verse  from  an  ancient  tragedy. 

"I  had  my  death  from  those  whom  I  had  saved. " 

As  at  the  obsequies  of  all  noble  Romans  the  funeral 
oration  was  to  be  pronounced  in  the  Forum.  Who 
was  to  be  the  orator?  Who  would  recall  to  that  ex- 
cited and  tempestuous  crowd  the  figure  of  the  great 
dead?  The  principal  heir  was  absent;  the  other  heirs 
were  for  the  most  part  personages  of  small  importance ; 


Funeral  of  Ccesar  7 

some  of  the  secondary  heirs  had  actually  taken  part 
in  the  conspiracy.  There  was  no  one  but  Caesar's 
colleague  Mark  Antony  who  was  also  named  in  the  will. 
His  task  was  no  easy  one,  for  how  was  he  to  speak  of 
Caesar  in  the  presence  both  of  his  veterans  and  of  his 
murderers?  Antony  skilfully  extricated  himself  from 
the  difficulty  by  making  public  documents  speak  for 
him.  He  called  upon  a  herald  to  read  the  decree 
whereby,  in  the  early  days  of  the  year,  the  senate  had 
conferred  on  Caesar  all  honours  human  and  divine. 
He  made  him  read  the  words  of  the  solemn  oath  in 
which  the  very  persons  who  were  so  soon  to  slay  him 
had  pledged  their  faith  to  the  dictator.  He  then 
added  a  few  words  of  his  own  and  left  the  rostrum. 
The  cortege  was  preparing  to  resume  its  way  to  the 
Campus  Martius  when  first  some  isolated  voices  and 
then  others,  more  numerous  and  more  insistent,  cried 
out  that  the  body  should  be  burned  there  and  then. 
In  a  moment  the  bearers  of  the  bier  were  overpowered. 
Benches,  stools,  tables,  faggots,  collected  wherever 
they  could  be  found,  together  with  doors  torn  from 
the  neighbouring  houses  and  public  buildings,  were 
heaped  together  and  set  on  fire,  and  on  this  pyre  was 
placed  the  body  of  the  great  Caesar  on  which  in  an 
access  of  frenzy  the  women  began  to  throw  their  neck- 
laces, the  veterans  their  arms,  the  trumpeters  their 
instruments  and  some  their  very  garments. 

The  burning  of  Caesar's  body  could  not  fail  to  be  the 
preliminary  of  a  much  vaster  conflagration.  From 
his  pyre  the  infuriated  mob  rushed  to  set  in  flames  the 
houses  of  Brutus  and  Cassius.  There  were  riots  in 
every  quarter  of  the  city  and  demonstrations  against 
the  tyrannicides  and  their  partisans,  some  of  whom 
were  torn  in  pieces.     Night  failed  to  calm  the  fury  and 


8  The  Third  Civil  War 

anger  of  the  populace,  and  the  agitation  burst  forth 
again  on  the  following  day.  The  demonstrations  of 
the  lower  classes  were  now  swollen  by  those  of  the 
very  numerous  foreigners  sojourning  in  Rome  who  also 
flocked  together  to  pay  the  last  tribute  of  gratitude  to 
the  man  who  had  begun  the  work  of  redeeming  the 
provinces.  It  was  a  terrible  scene  of  anarchy  at 
which  even  the  Caesarians,  or  at  least  the  more  pacific 
and  influential  among  them,  looked  on  in  terror.  But 
it  had  the  effect  of  annulling  the  amnesty  of  March 
17th.  Though  the  conspirators  had  been  amnestied 
by  the  senate,  the  populace,  the  veterans,  and  the 
soldiers  had  not  forgiven  them.  They  called  loudly 
for  vengeance,  and,  when  they  could,  they  executed  it 
with  their  own  hands.  The  tumult  did  not  work  it- 
self out  as  the  days  went  by;  on  the  contrary  it  per- 
sisted implacably,  dying  down  at  intervals  only  to 
flare  up  again  more  threateningly  than  ever,  and  mak- 
ing it  impossible  for  the  more  prominent  conspirators 
to  leave  their  houses  or  to  appear  in  public,  thus 
preventing  those  who  held  office  from  performing 
their  functions. 

3.  The  Son  of  Caesar  and  his  Struggle  with  Mark 
Antony.  These  public  tumults  did  what  Caesar's 
friends  had  not  dared  to  do.  They  expelled  the  mur- 
derers of  the  dictator  first  from  the  senate  and  the 
magistracies  and  then  from  Rome  itself.  In  a  few 
days  public  life  was  practically  paralyzed.  It  was  all 
but  impossible  for  the  senate  to  meet,  and,  towards 
the  end  of  the  month,  the  conspirators,  weary  of  living 
a  threatened  existence  shut  up  in  their  houses,  began 
to  leave  the  capital  and  to  seek  refuge  elsewhere. 
Their  departure  was  followed  by  that  of  their  friends 
and  sympathizers;  Cicero  himself,  the  most  influential 


The  Son  of  CcBsar  and  his  Struggles       9 

member  of  the  senate,  left  for  Puteoli  (Pozzuoli)  on 
the  6th  or  7th  of  April.  The  senatorial  party  was 
breaking  up,  and  little  more  than  a  month  after  Caesar's 
death,  Antony,  without  making  the  slightest  effort  was 
almost  automatically  left  master  of  the  State.  There 
was  no  one  who  could  oppose  him.  The  conspirators 
were  scattered  over  Italy.  The  senate  was  paralyzed. 
Almost  all  the  holders  of  the  magistracies  had  fled. 
The  government  of  the  State  was  vacant,  and  there 
appeared  to  be  nothing  left  for  Antony  to  do  but  to 
seize  it  for  himself  by  securing  the  support  of  the  troops 
and  the  veterans  of  Caesar  and  by  ingratiating  him- 
self with  the  populace  who  cherished  the  memory  of 
the  dictator.  But  suddenly  an  unexpected  obstacle 
arose.  This  obstacle  was  Caesar's  heir,  his  nephew  and 
adopted  son  Caius  Octavius,  a  young  man  scarcely 
eighteen  years  of  age  who  had  been  surprised  by  the 
death  of  his  illustrious  relative  while  staying  at  Apol- 
lonia  on  the  Adriatic  coast  not  far  from  Epidamnus, 
and  who  had  returned  to  Rome  while  Antony  was  in 
Campania. 

Octavius  was  born  at  Rome  on  September  23,  63  B.C., 
the  year  of  the  conspiracy  of  Catiline  and  the  consul- 
ship of  Cicero.  His  mother  was  a  niece  (the  daughter 
of  a  sister)  of  Caesar.  He  had  lost  his  father  w-hen  he 
was  four  years  old  and,  his  mother  having  married 
again,  he  had  been  brought  up  by  Julia,  his  maternal 
grandmother.  From  his  earliest  years  he  had  been  a 
delicate,  ailing,  and  nervous  boy,  but  intelligent,  sa- 
gacious and  studious.  Taken  into  favour  by  the  dic- 
tator, he  had  been  given  some  honorary  office  in  spite 
of  his  extreme  youth,  and  had  been  sent  toApollonia 
in  order  to  prepare  to  accompany  his  uncle  on  the 
Parthian  campaign.     He  had  therefore  as  yet  done 


10  The  Third  Civil  War 

nothing,  and  nothing  was  known  of  his  views.  But, 
if  he  had  the  ability  and  the  ambition,  it  would  be 
very  difficult  for  him,  the  proteg6  and  the  adopted  son 
of  the  dictator  to  renounce  the  task  imposed  on  him 
by  adoption  and  by  the  course  of  events,  the  task, 
namely,  of  defending  the  policy  he  had  inherited  from 
Caesar  and  of  taking  vengeance  on  his  murderers. 
On  this  ground  his  path  and  Antony's  crossed,  hence 
the  quarrel  which  immediately  arose  between  them. 
Octavius  had  at  once  claimed  from  Antony  the  money 
which  must  have  been  found  in  Caesar's  coffers.  But 
Antony  not  only  kept  the  money  for  himself  but  began 
to  intrigue  with  the  comitia  curiata  to  induce  that  body 
to  refuse  or  retard  the  ratification  of  the  adoption  of 
Caius  Octavius  into  the  family  of  the  Julii.  He  relied 
on  the  absence  of  the  majority  of  the  more  important 
senators,  the  humiliation  of  the  rest,  the  strength  he 
derived  from  the  support  of  the  veterans  and  the 
lower  orders,  to  enable  him  to  pass  over  Octavius 
altogether  and  to  attain  the  commanding  position  at 
which  he  aimed  by  a  few  decisive  and  resolute  strokes. 
On  the  2d  of  June,  he  caused  the  comitia  tributa  to 
pass  a  law  extending  for  five  years,  i.e.,  until  39  B.C., 
the  government  of  Macedonia,  which  had  been  as- 
signed to  him  by  Caesar,  as  well  as  that  of  Syria  which 
Cassar  had  given  to  Cornelius  Dolabella.'  Shortly 
afterwards  Antony's  brother  Lucius,  a  tribune  of  the 
people,    brought   forward  a  great  agrarian  law,  the 

'  On  the  intricate  question  of  the  provinces  assigned  by  Csesar 
before  his  death  cf.  G.  Ferrero,  The  Greatness  and  Decline  of 
Rome,  vol.  iii.,  Appendix  B.  A  final  proof,  however,  that  Mace- 
donia and  Syria  had  not  been  given  by  Caesar  to  Brutus  and 
Cassius  may  be  found  in  the  edict  of  Marcus  Antonius,  cited  by 
Josephus,  Ant.  Jud.,  xiv.,  12,  4-5. 


The  Son  of  Ccesar  and  his  Struggles     1 1 

object  of  which  was  to  prepare  the  way  for  a  distribu- 
tion among  the  veterans  of  all  the  remaining  ager 
puhlicus  in  Italy  and  to  acquire  for  the  same  purpose 
further  land  now  in  private  possession.  Finally  he 
himself  with  Dolabella  suddenly  proposed  to  the 
people  a  law  de  permutatione  provinciarutn,^  •whereby 
Gallia  Cisalpina,  that  most  precious  province  which  he 
meant  to  use  for  keeping  Italy  in  subjection,  was  to  be 
taken  from  Decimus  Brutus,  who  had  held  it  since 
April,  and  given  to  himself  instead  of  Macedonia,  from 
which  he  was  to  be  allowed  to  remove  the  troops,  a 
force  amounting  to  about  fifty  or  sixty  thousand  men. 
His  intention  to  succeed  Caesar  in  the  predominant 
position  in  the  State  was  clear.  From  Cisalpine  Gaul 
Antony  at  the  head  of  an  army  of  such  strength  and 
with  the  support  of  the  soldiers,  would  dominate 
Rome.  In  the  senatorial  order  and  among  the  upper 
class  generally  hatred  of  Antony  was  growing ;  but  the 
support  of  the  veterans  and  the  absence  from  Rome  of 
the  most  prominent  and  influential  of  the  conspirators 
made  his  position  exceedingly  strong.  In  spite  of 
some  hesitation,  caused  by  an  attempt  at  opposition 
in  the  senate,  the  lex  de  permutatione  was  passed  in 
the  month  of  August.  Antony,  and  with  him  the 
Caesarian  party,  were  therefore  again  masters  of  Gallia 
Cisalpina,  of  the  army  which  was  nearest  to  the  cap- 
ital and  therefore  of  the  State.  The  position  of  the 
conspirators  and  of  all  the  party  which  supported 
them  seemed  desperate  when  this  party  obtained  an 
unexpected  ally  in  the  person  of  Caius  Octavius  him- 
self whose  adoption  had  now  been  confirmed  and  who 
therefore  had  now  the  right  to  call  himself  C.  Julius 

'  On  this  law  cf.  Ferrero,  The  Greatness  and  Decline  of  Rome, 
vol.  iii.,  pp.  85  ff. 


12  The   Third  Civil  War 

Cassar  Octavianus.  The  quarrel  between  him  and 
Antony  had  become  steadily  more  bitter.  Resolved 
to  carry  out  the  obligations  imposed  on  him  by  the 
testament  of  Caesar  and  thus  to  create  for  himself  a 
secure  basis  of  popularity,  Octavian,  when  Antony 
refused  to  surrender  to  him  Caesar's  property,  had 
sold  all  his  personal  possessions,  had  summoned  to  his 
assistance  his  relatives  and  the  most  faithful  of  Caesar's 
friends,  and  had  contrived  to  distribute  to  every  poor 
citizen  of  Rome  the  legacy  specified  by  his  adoptive 
father's  will.  He  then  prepared  and  exhibited  in 
honour  of  Caesar's  memory,  and  for  the  diversion  of 
the  veterans  and  of  the  people,  games  which  he  called 
Ludi  VictoricB  Ccesaris,  the  Games  of  the  Victory  of 
Caesar.  When,  however,  in  the  course  of  these  pro- 
ceedings, which  took  place  during  the  last  ten  days 
of  July,  he  proposed  to  have  Caesar's  gilded  throne 
borne  in  state  he  was  forbidden  to  do  so  by  certain 
tribunes  who  had  been  suborned  by  Antony.  Octav- 
ian appealed  against  them  to  the  consul,  but  in  vain. 
Not  only  did  the  consul  support  their  action  but  he 
threatened  Octavian  with  arrest  if  he  persisted  in 
carrying  on  an  agitation  among  the  people.  A  worse 
thing  happened  some  months  later.  About  the  4th 
or  5th  of  October  all  Rome  was  informed  that  Octav- 
ian had  attempted  to  have  Antony  assassinated  in  his 
own  house  by  hired  murderers.  Was  this  story  true  or 
false?'  It  is  impossible  to  say.  But,  whether  true 
or  false,  the  fact  that  such  an  atrocious  charge  was 
made  meant  an  open  breach  between  Antony  and 
Octavian,  and  this  episode  for  the  time  decisively 
threw  Caesar's  heir  into  the  arms  of  the  party  of  the 
'  On  this  obscure  episode  cf.  G.  Ferrero,  The  Greatness  and 
Decline  of  Rome,  vol.  iii.,  p.  loi. 


The  De  OJficiis  of  Cicero  13 

conspirators.  He  was,  in  fact,  acclaimed  by  them  as 
their  best  defender  now  that  Brutus  and  Cassius  had 
gone  to  the  East.  Throughout  all  this  Octavian  had 
the  intention  of  going  himself  to  Campania  so  that  he 
might  recruit  for  himself  among  Cassar's  veterans  a 
bodyguard  which  at  the  opportune  moment  might 
become  the  guardians  of  the  conservative  republic 
against  Antony.  In  the  middle  of  October  he  actually 
left  Rome,  taking  with  him  all  the  money  that  he 
himself  and  his  friends  had  been  able  to  collect  in  order 
to  attempt  the  most  revolutionary  enterprise  which 
Rome  had  seen  since  the  days  of  Milo  and  Clodius. 

4.  The  De  Officiis  of  Cicero.  While  Octavian 
was  successfully  pursuing  his  dangerous  enterprise  in 
Campania,  Cicero,  weary  and  disgusted  at  the  many 
and  ever  increasing  misfortunes  of  his  country,  was 
engaged  at  Puteoli  in  a  loftier  and  perhaps  a  less 
feasible  undertaking  than  Octavian,  nothing  less  in 
fact  than  a  moral  regeneration  of  the  people  by  which 
alone,  in  his  opinion,  the  fortunes  of  Rome  could  be 
saved.  Like  all  Romans  since  the  second  Punic  War, 
he  was  much  preoccupied  with  the  tragic  contradic- 
tion in  which  Italy  had  for  the  last  century  been 
entangled,  the  contradiction  whereby  culture  was  de- 
graded into  corruption,  wealth  into  self-indulgence,  the 
perennial  and  ever  growing  habit  of  war  into  a  pro- 
gressive obliteration  of  the  all  important  military 
virtue  of  former  ages,  while  the  conquest  and  subjec- 
tion of  other  countries  was  leading  to  the  extinction  of 
individual  liberty  in  his  own.  For  years  he  had  been 
seeking  the  unattainable  means  of  reconciling  empire 
with  liberty,  comfort  and  riches  with  domestic  and 
public  discipline,  culture  with  morality. 

This  was  the  theme  of  the  De  Officiis,  the  book  he 


14  The  Third  Civil  War 

was  writing  in  these  months,  in  which  the  compilations 
and  translations  he  made  from  this  or  that  Greek 
philosopher  have  not  remained  dead  literary  matter, 
but  express  very  vividly  the  moral  crisis  through 
which  the  author  was  passing,  and  bear  eloquent  testi- 
mony to  the  political  crisis  of  the  time.  In  writing  his 
book  Cicero's  chief  object  is  to  inquire  what  should  be 
held  to  be  the  virtues  required  by  the  ruling  class  in  a 
well  governed  State,  and  he  discovers  them  to  be 
all  summed  up  in  a  single  principle,  which  is  as  follows : 
Riches  and  power  are  not  supreme  goods,  to  be  pur- 
sued and  desired  for  their  own  sake,  but  rather  heavy- 
burdens  to  be  assumed  and  borne  for  the  good  of  all. 
As  soon  as  the  nobility  and  the  rest  of  the  ruling  class 
grasped  this  principle  they  would  know  how  to  live 
with  dignit}"  but  without  pomp,  spending  thought  and 
labour  on  their  public  duties,  not  in  order  to  make  for- 
tunes and  corrupt  the  people  but  to  serve  zealously 
the  interests  of  the  middle  and  poorer  classes.  They 
would  undertake  works  of  public  utility  such  as  walls, 
harbours,  aqueducts,  roads,  and  not  mere  monu- 
ments of  luxury  such  as  theatres,  porticos,  and  temples. 
They  would  help  the  people  in  their  necessities,  but 
without  ruining  the  public  treasury,  and  would  aid 
deserving  debtors  without  using  revolutionary  meth- 
ods to  abolish  debt.  Finally  they  would  distribute 
land  to  the  needy,  but  without  taking  it  from  its 
rightful  owners.  In  this  way  the  good  of  all  would 
become  the  supreme  aim  of  government  and  its  attain- 
ment by  mankind  would  be  secured  by  a  scrupulous 
respect  for  the  law,  by  the  intelligent  liberality  of  the 
great,  and  the  general  practice  of  virtue.  Nor  were 
the  subject  peoples  in  the  provinces  to  be  left  out  of 
this  ideal  reconstruction  of  the  Roman  polity.     Even 


The  War  of  Mutina  15 

where  they  were  concerned  it  was  the  duty  of  the 
republic  to  use  her  power  with  justice,  seeking  rather 
the  good  of  her  subjects  than  her  own.  She  should 
abstain  from  acts  of  violent  aggression  like  those  of 
Cffisar  and  Crassus  and  from  all  useless  acts  of  ferocious 
repression.  She  should  abhor  treachery  and  deceit, 
and  war  itself,  except  such  as  aimed  at  consolidating 
the  national  defence  and  preserving  peace.  She 
should  prefer  great  orators,  philosophers,  and  jurists 
to  great  soldiers,  taking  care,  however,  that  in  studying 
them  the  citizen  should  not  be  distracted  from  his 
own  civic  duty  which  ought  to  be  the  supreme  end  of 
all  his  efforts.  Thus  alone  could  be  founded  the  true 
aristocratic  republic,  that  is  to  say  the  State  governed 
by  its  best  men,  without  ambitious  demagogues  or 
violent  conservatives,  in  which  there  should  be  no 
new  Caesar  and  no  new  Sulla.  In  writing  thus  Cicero, 
though  he  did  not  know  it,  was  laying  dov/n  the  better 
and  the  more  essential  part  of  what  was  to  be  the  pro- 
gramme and  the  secret  of  the  Empire  and  the  imperial 
policy.  But  he  v*'ould  not  have  recognized  his  plan  in 
its  realization.  It  was  not  his  will  or  his  teaching  that 
were  to  bring  that  realization  to  pass,  but  rather  the 
final  exasperation  of  the  crisis  through  which  the  State 
was  to  struggle  for  its  existence  for  yet  another  ten 
years.  For  the  moment  he  was  merely  preparing  him- 
self to  look  on  at  the  first  excesses  of  Caius  Octavius, 
the  man  who  was  destined  one  day  to  em.body  in  real 
life  the  political  system  of  which  he  dreamed. 

5.  The  War  of  Mutina  (43  B.C.).  Octavian's  tour 
in  Campania  had  been  successful.  By  depreciating 
Antony  as  a  somewhat  luke-warm  Caesarian  who  was 
much  more  ready  to  come  to  terms  with  the  enemy 
than  to  fight,  and  above  all  by  spending  enormous 


l6  The  Third  Civil  War 

sums  of  money,  he  succeeded  in  recruiting  3000  men 
(some  say  as  many  as  10,000')  whom  he  intended  to 
use  not  for  avenging  Csesar,  but  for  a  very  different 
purpose.  Meanwhile,  by  the  agency  of  friends,  he 
was  secretly  endeavouring  to  corrupt  the  Macedonian 
legions  which  Antony  had  brought  to  Italy,  and  which 
were  discontented  at  being  sent  to  Gaul  instead  of 
against  the  empire  of  the  Parthians  where  they  had 
hoped  to  secure  much  spoil.  Antony  was  exasperated 
by  all  these  intrigues  so  he  sent  three  legions  along 
the  Adriatic  coast  in  the  direction  of  Cisalpine  Gaul, 
led  two  into  Latium  and  then  went  himself  to  Rome, 
determined  to  bring  matters  to  a  head  with  Octa- 
vian  by  prosecuting  him  for  illegal  armaments.  It 
was  a  highly  critical  moment  for  Octavian.  Had 
Antony  succeeded  in  putting  him  on  trial  for  per- 
duellio,  he  would  have  had  to  choose  between  raising 
the  standard  of  revolt  and  committing  suicide.  For 
a  moment  it  really  seemed  as  if  he  were  lost.  At  the 
approach  of  danger  the  Pompeians  who  had  hitherto 
encouraged  him,  left  him  to  his  fate.  Even  the  veter- 
ans he  had  himself  recruited,  somewhat  alarmed  by 
the  illegality  of  the  situation  in  which  they  found 
themselves  and  rather  disconcerted  by  his  proud  and 
ambiguous  bearing,  vacillated.  He  was  saved  by  a 
miracle.  At  the  last  moment  the  two  legions  which 
Antony  had  brought  to  Latium,  irritated  by  his 
severity,  discontented  with  the  gifts  they  had  received, 
and,  moreover,  skilfully  played  upon  by  Octavian, 
mutinied  and  declared  for  the  son  of  Ceesar.  This 
mutiny  reversed  the  situation  to  the  disadvantage  of 
Antony,  whose  danger  was  the  greater  as  in  the  mean- 
time Decimus  Brutus,  resolved  not  to  recognize  the 
'  Cf.  Cic,  Ad  Alt.,  xvi.,  8,  2;  App.,  B.  C,  iii,,  40, 


The  War  of  Mutina  17 

lex  de  permutatione  was  preparing  to  resist  and  was 
arming  troops  in  Cisalpine  Gaul.  With  the  three 
legions  which  still  remained  faithful  to  him  Antony 
was  in  danger  of  being  caught  between  Octavian  and 
Decimus  Brutus.  In  order  to  avert  this  danger,  and 
to  defend  and  hold  the  threatened  province  at  all 
costs,  Antony,  after  hastily  siunmoning  the  senate  to 
discuss  the  question  of  the  provinces  which  were  still 
vacant,  did  not  hesitate  to  leave  Rome  early  in  Decem- 
ber, 44.  He  took  with  him  all  the  veterans  who  were 
in  Rome  and  who  had  rallied  to  his  assistance  im- 
mediately after  the  Ides  of  March;  he  summoned  the 
sixth  legion  which  had  remained  in  Macedonia,  to 
join  him,  and  collected  new  forces  as  fast  as  he  could. 
He  pitched  his  camp  at  Ariminum  (Rimini)  and  thence 
commenced  operations  against  Decimus  Brutus. 

The  consul's  departure  from  Rome  radically 
changed  the  political  situation  in  the  republic  in  favour 
of  the  party  of  the  conspirators.  Octavian,  who  was 
now  definitely  committed  to  opposing  Antony,  drew 
nearer  and  nearer  to  the  Pompeians  and  opened  nego- 
tiations with  Decimus  Brutus  for  common  action. 
Decimus  Brutus,  finding  himself  supported  at  Rome, 
decided  to  resist  Antony,  notwithstanding  the  exiguity 
of  his  forces.  His  firm  attitude  infused  courage  into 
the  party  of  the  conspirators  who  began  to  hold  their 
heads  up  again  in  the  capital.  The  most  significant 
sign  of  the  new  situation  was  the  determined  attitude 
assumed  by  Cicero.  His  relations  with  Antony  had 
never  been  good.  Several  times  during  the  preceding 
months  the  great  orator  had  felt  bound  to  take  up  his 
pen  or  to  raise  his  voice  against  the  audacity  of  the 
Caesarian  party.  But  he  had  not  yet  ventured  upon 
resolute  and  continuous  action,  and  after  each  effort 


1 8  The  Third  Civil  War 

he  had  fallen  back  into  his  fixed  condition  of  weariness 
and  lassitude.  But  from  the  20th  of  December  in 
that  tragic  year  44,  from  the  day  on  which  the  senate 
met  for  the  first  time  after  Antony's  departure,  all  his 
hesitation  disappeared.  At  that  sitting  he  made  the 
speech  known  in  his  collected  works  as  the  third  Philip- 
pic and  for  the  first  time  openly  declared  himself  an 
opponent  of  Antony.  At  the  sitting  of  January  i,  43, 
when  debate  arose  on  the  situation,  he  delivered  the 
fifth  Philippic,  in  which  he  roundly  asserted  that  war 
should  be  declared  on  the  consul  without  more  ado. 
The  mild  and  prudent  man  of  letters  had  become  the 
advocate  of  extreme  measures.  In  the  senate,  how- 
ever, there  was  a  group  friendly  to  Antony,  and,  above 
all,  there  were  many  who  dreaded  a  new  civil  war. 
The  debate  was  therefore  long.  Great  honours  were 
granted  to  Octavian,  who  in  the  senate  was  allowed  to 
sit  with  senators  of  consular  rank,  and  was  author- 
ized to  stand  for  the  consulship  ten  years  before  he 
was  legally  entitled  to  do  so.  As  regards  Antony, 
however,  a  middle  course  was  adopted.  War  was 
not  declared  against  him  but  a  deputation  of  three 
senators  was  sent  to  invite  him  to  surrender  Cisalpine 
Gaul. 

Antony,  in  the  meantime,  had  forced  Decimus  to 
shut  himself  up  in  Mutina  (Modena)  which  he  besieged, 
though  with  no  great  energy,  collecting  new  troops  the 
while  from  all  parts  of  Italy,  even  from  the  most 
Southern  districts  whither  he  had  sent  Ventidius  Bas- 
sus,  one  of  his  officers,  to  raise  three  legions.  The 
three  envoys  of  the  senate  arrived,  addressed  him  with 
the  respect  which  was  his  due,  and  Antony  entered 
into  an  amicable  discussion  with  them.  In  the'  end 
he  declared  that  he  was  ready  to  surrender  Cisalpine 


The   War  of  Mutina  19 

Gaul  if  he  could  he  guaranteed  Transalpine  Gaul  with 
six  legions  for  five  years  and  the  confirmation  of  all  his 
acts  as  consul.  To  many  friends  of  peace  this  proposal 
seemed  reasonable.  Therefore,  at  the  sitting  of  the 
senate  early  in  February  at  which  the  report  of  the 
envoys  was  discussed,  Cicero  strove  in  vain  to  prove 
to  his  hearers  that,  as  Antony  had  not  obeyed  the  sum- 
mons of  the  senate,  they  should  at  once  declare  him  a 
public  enemy  Qiostis  publicus)  and  commence  warlike 
operations  against  him.  The  majority  in  the  senate, 
though  unwilling  to  accept  Antony's  proposals,  wished 
to  keep  a  way  to  agreement  still  open,  and,  instead  of 
declaring  war  it  was  merely  decided  to  declare  a  state 
of  tiimultus,  which  meant  no  more  than  that  public 
order  was  disturbed. 

Moderate  counsels  thus  prevailed  in  the  senate,  not 
only  from  love  of  peace  but  also  because  of  the  slender 
confidence  which  the  party  of  the  conspirators  reposed 
in  their  own  soldiers.  The  consul  Hirtius,  who  had 
already  left  Rome,  had  taken  command  of  Octavian's 
army  and  had  begun  to  raise  new  forces.  But  neither 
he  nor  Octavian,  nor  even  the  besieged  Decimus 
Brutus,  though  they  disposed  of  a  superiority  of 
numbers,  ventured  to  risk  energetic  measures  against 
Antony  because  in  their  ranks  there  were  too  many  of 
Caesar's  veterans  who,  they  feared,  would  not  fight 
against  Antony  and  his  soldiers.  About  the  middle  of 
February,  however,  a  really  remarkable  piece  of  news 
was  received  at  Rome.  Marcus  Brutus,  who  a  few 
months  earlier  had  fled  from  Rome  almost  as  an  exile, 
taking  with  him  nothing  but  a  few  tens  of  thousands  of 
sesterces  which  he  owed  to  the  generosity  of  a  friend, 
had  now,  with  the  assistance  of  some  of  his  companions 
in  exile  at  Athens,  contrived  to  carry  to  a  successful 


20  •  The  Third  Civil  War 

conclusion  a  plan  of  supreme  audacity.  He  had 
managed  to  get  possession  of  the  tribute  which  was 
being  sent  to  Rome  by  the  Governor  of  the  province  of 
Asia — a  sum  of  no  less  than  16,000  talents.  By  using 
this  money  to  corrupt  the  Roman  armies  in  the  East 
and  to  raise  new  levies,  he  had  contrived  to  create  an 
army  sufficient  to  occupy  the  province  of  Macedonia, 
and,  finally,  to  lay  his  hands  on  the  great  military 
magazines  which  Caisar  had  prepared  there  for  the 
projected  oriental  war.  With  a  part  of  these  forces 
he  was  now  besieging  in  Apollonia  Caius  Antonius, 
brother  of  Marcus  and  governor  of  Macedonia.  Thus 
the  Pompeian  party  now  had  a  great  army  and  a  war 
chest  in  the  East,  and,  what  was  more,  they  now  had 
proof  that  it  was  untrue  that  Caesar's  veterans  would 
only  fight  for  the  Cassarian  party.  The  party  of  the 
conspirators  decidedly  recovered  its  ascendancy  in  the 
senate  and  the  effects  of  this  were  immediately  visible. 
Their  former  caution  in  dealing  with  Antony  was  suc- 
ceeded by  a  new  audacity;  the  same  assembly  which 
hitherto  had  been  irresponsive  to  the  stimulus  of  Cic- 
ero's fiery  eloquence,  changed  its  tone  in  a  moment, 
and  lent  a  reverent  ear  to  his  new  oration  against 
Antony  (the  tenth  Philippic).  They  approved  of  all 
the  more  than  revolutionary  proceedings  of  Brutus  in 
the  East,  and  invested  him  with  pro-consular  command 
in  Macedonia,  Greece,  and  Illyria.  What  was  still 
more  important,  they  at  the  same  time  annulled  all 
Antony's  acts  and  all  the  laws  passed  on  his  initiative. 
The  senate  had  thus  declared  war  on  Antony,  and 
the  military  operations  which  had  hitherto  been 
hesitating  and  uncertain,  proceeded  at  a  much  more 
rapid  pace.  Antony  began  to  besiege  Mutina  in 
earnest,  and  ordered  Ventidius  to  join  him  with  his 


The  War  of  Mutina  21 

legions  as  soon  as  possible.  The  senate  on  the  other 
hand  resolved  to  send  effective  aid  to  Decimus  Brutus. 
On  March  19th,  the  other  consul  Vibius  Pansa,  left 
Rome  with  four  fresh  legions  and  marched  to  effect  a 
junction  with  the  armies  of  his  colleague  Hirtius  and 
of  Octavian  who  were  to  attack  Antony  before  Mutina 
and  thus  extricate  Decimus.  On  the  14th  or  15th  of 
April,  Antony,  though  in  inferior  force,  attempted  to 
prevent  the  junction  of  Pansa  with  Hirtius  and  Oc- 
tavian by  attacking  the  former  on  the  march,  while 
his  brother  Lucius,  by  a  feint  attack  on  the  camp  of 
Hirtius  and  Octavian,  was  to  distract  their  attention 
from  what  was  intended  to  be  the  main  action.  Hir- 
tius, however,  seeing  through  Antony's  design,  had 
sent  twelve  cohorts  in  good  time  to  meet  Pansa,  and 
they  succeeded  in  joining  and  accompanying  the 
approaching  army.  Yet  when  Antony  attacked  Pan- 
sa's  reinforced  legions  near  Forum  Gallorum  (Castel- 
franco)  he  managed  to  defeat  them,  and  Pansa  himself 
being  seriously  wounded,  had  to  abandon  the  field  of 
battle.  A  messenger  from  the  defeated  army,  how- 
ever, succeeded  in  reaching  the  camp  of  Hirtius  with 
an  appeal  for  help,  and  Hirtius  at  once  sent  two  legions 
of  veterans  to  the  rescue.  Antony's  twenty  victorious 
cohorts,  weary  with  the  fight,  were  retiring  to  their 
encampment  when  they  were  attacked  by  the  fresh 
troops  of  a  new  adversary  and  suffered  a  very  serious 
reverse. 

This  was  the  first  encounter  and  it  was  in  no  way 
decisive.  Neither  side  had  engaged  more  than  a 
fraction  of  its  forces  and  Ventidius  was  coming  up  by 
the  Via  ^^milia  in  the  rear  of  Hirtius  and  Octavian. 
This  circumstance,  as  well  as  the  gravity  of  the  situa- 
tion of  the  army  of  Decimus  Brutus,  which  was  on  the 


22  The  Third  Civil  War 

brink  of  starvation  in  Mutina,  induced  Hirtius,  Pansa, 
and  Octavian  a  week  later  to  make  an  effort  to  break 
up  the  siege  with  the  co-operation,  which  they  trusted 
would  be  forthcoming,  of  a  partial  or  general  sortie  of 
the  invested  garrison.  Matters  turned  out  as  had 
been  expected,  and  the  battle — or  rather  the  two 
battles — which  had  begun  on  both  fronts  of  the  invest- 
ing army,  raged  furiously.  Hirtius,  fighting  gallantly, 
perished  in  the  mel^e,  and  Octavian,  for  the  first  time 
in  his  life  had  to  fight  simultaneously  as  a  general  and 
as  a  soldier.  In  the  evening  the  forces  of  Decimus 
Brutus  and  those  of  Hirtius  and  Octavian  were  com- 
pelled to  retire.  But  Antony's  losses  had  been  very 
severe,  so  severe  that,  fearing  another  attack  on  the 
following  day,  and  before  the  arrival  of  Ventidius's 
reinforcements,  he  suddenly  decided  during  the  night 
to  raise  the  siege  and  to  retire  into  Gallia  Narbonensis 
after  sending  messengers  ordering  Ventidius  to  join 
him  there  by  way  of  Liguria. 

6.  Triumviri  Reipublicae  Constituendae.  The  news 
of  Antony's  retreat  at  first  roused  great  enthusiasm  in 
the  senate.  For  a  moment  it  was  believed  that  the 
rebel  general  was  lost,  that  the  war  was  won,  and  the 
Cassarians  exterminated.  At  a  memorable  sitting 
held  on  April  26th,  Antony  and  his  partisans  were 
finally  proscribed.  But  the  real  state  of  the  case  was 
very  different  from  these  rosy  illusions.  Antony  was 
abandoning  Mutina  with  an  army  which,  if  it  had  not 
been  victorious,  had  certainly  not  been  beaten.  He 
was  nioreover  flying  to  meet  a  fresh  and  friendly  army 
under  the  command  of  M.  .^milius  Lepidus,  governor 
of  Gallia  Narbonensis,  and  a  friend  of  Caesar,  with 
whom  during  the  siege  of  Mutina  he  had  entered  into 
successful  negotiations  and  who  had  promised  to  help 


Triumviri  Reipublicce  ConstituendcB       23 

hini.  On  the  other  hand,  of  the  armies  of  the  victors 
one,  that  of  Decimus  Brutus,  was  exhausted  by  the 
long  agony  of  the  siege,  while  the  other  was  now 
without  a  general,  for  Pansa  had  also  succumbed  to  his 
wounds  a  few  days  after  the  battle,  and  Octavian  had 
no  serious  claims  to  that  title,  either  on  the  ground  of 
military  experience  or  of  natural  ability.  As  a  matter 
of  fact  Decimus  found  it  impossible  to  persuade  Oc- 
tavian to  cut  off  Ventidius  Bassus  who  was  now  cross- 
ing the  Appennines  in  order  to  descend  into  Liguria 
and  thence  to  join  Antony  in  Gallia  Narbonensis. 
Octavian  had  made  up  his  mind  to  fight  Antony  when 
Antony  had  wished  to  bar  the  path  of  his  ambition; 
but  now  he  could  not  be  eager  to  sacrifice  himself  in 
order  to  secure  the  triumph  of  his  father's  murderers, 
a  triumph  which,  without  solid  guarantees,  would 
have  meant  his  own  political  extinction.  Moreover, 
even  if  he  had  been  so  blind  to  his  own  interests  as  to 
wish  to  take  this  course,  it  was  clear  that  he  would  not 
be  justified  in  completely  trusting  his  soldiers.  The 
hope  of  great  rewards  and  the  presence  of  an  ex- 
Caesarian  like  Hirtius  as  well  as  of  Octavian  himself 
had  induced  them  to  fight  Antony.  But  it  was  diffi- 
cult to  suppose  that  Caesar's  old  soldiers  and  officers 
would  be  willing  to  go  to  the  length  of  exterminating 
one  of  Caesar's  old  generals  in  order  to  found  on  his 
ruin  the  power  of  the  senate  and  of  the  conspirators. 
To  persuade  them  so  far  great  inducements  would  be 
necessary — splendid  and  immediate  donations,  mani- 
fest guarantees  in  respect  of  the  man  who  now  led 
them.     Was  the  senate  good  for  so  much? 

The  senate  on  their  part  immediately  showed  the 
hesitation  usual  in  all  assemblies  divided  into  discord- 
ant parties  at  critical  moments  when  resolute  and 


24  The  Third  Civil  War 

thorough-going  action  is  required.  While  Octavian 
remained  at  Bononia  (Bologna)  inert  and  apparently 
paralyzed,  they  decided  after  long  hesitation  that  only 
the  two  legions  which  had  mutinied  against  Antony 
were  to  receive  any  recompense,  and  they  were  only 
to  get  10,000  sesterces  per  head  and  not  20,000  as  had 
been  promised.  It  was  further  decided,  not  indeed  to 
deprive  Octavian  of  the  command  as  some  had  pro- 
posed, but  to  make  a  show  of  refusing  to  recognize 
his  authority  as  in  any  way  official,  and  to  treat  di- 
rectly with  the  five  legions  under  his  command  without 
any  reference  to  him  as  their  general. '  Such  methods 
were  not  calculated  to  exercise  a  favourable  influence 
over  his  uncertain  purpose. 

At  the  time  when  Decimus  Brutus  with  his  weary 
troops  was  setting  himself,  unassisted  and  not  without 
delay,  to  the  difficult  task  of  pursuing  Antony,  that 
general  himself  with  four  legions,  other  forces  not  yet 
embodied  in  formations  and  all  his  cavalry  intact 
was  proceeding  by  forced  marches  towards  Gallia 
Narbonensis  caring  nothing  for  the  fatigue  or  the 
roughness  of  the  road.  On  April  23rd  he  swooped  like 
a  whirlwind  on  Parma,  on  the  25th  he  had  reached 
Placentia  (Piacenza),  on  the  28th  Tortona  (Dertona) 
from  which,  after  resting  for  one  day,  his  army  had 
begun  the  ascent  of  the  mountains  which  separated 
them  from  Vada  Sabbatia  (Vado).  On  May  5th  and 
7th  he  was  joined  with  three  legions  by  Ventidius 
Bassus  whom  Octavian  had  permitted  to  escape,  and 

'  For  a  more  minute  account  of  the  relations  between  the 
senate  and  Octavian  after  the  battle  of  Mutina,  and  on  the 
necessity  for  caution  in  accepting  the  accounts  given  by  ancient 
historians  cf.  G.  Ferrero,  The  Greatness  and  Decline  of  Rome,  vol. 
iii.,  p.  152  ff. 


Triumviri  Reipiiblicce  Constituendcc      25 

the  united  force  proceeded  on  its  way  to  Gallia  Nar- 
bonensis,  arriving  after  eight  days'  march  at  Forum 
Julii  (Frejus)  which  was  only  twenty-four  miles  away 
from  Lepidus  whose  camp  was  at  Forum  Vocontii 
(Vidauban).  At  the  beginning  of  June,  Rome  learned 
that  the  troops  of  the  governor  of  Gallia  Narbonensis 
had  fraternized  with  those  of  the  routed  pro-consul  of 
Cisalpine  Gaul,  and  that  Antony  and  Lepidus  were 
jointly  in  arms  against  the  republic. 

This  was,  in  truth,  an  inevitable  development.  At 
Caesar's  death  Lepidus  was  regarded  as  the  most  in- 
timate of  the  dictator's  friends,  and  he  was  also  his 
magister  equitum.  In  the  evening  of  March  15,  44, 
he  alone  among  the  Cssarians  had  hastened  to  An- 
tony in  order  to  decide  what  should  be  done  in  the 
critical  situation  of  the  party,  and  it  appears  to  have 
been  his  opinion  that  the  right  course  was  to  attack 
the  Capitol  with  the  forces  at  their  disposal,  and  put 
the  conspirators  to  death.  Later,  when  the  situation 
had  become  more  complicated,  he  had  been  distracted 
between  the  two  parties,  until,  making  a  show  of 
having  been  compelled  by  his  own  soldiers,  he  had 
resolutely  joined  the  side  of  Antony  against  the  coali- 
tion of  Octavian  and  the  party  of  the  conspirators.  In 
any  case  Antony  was  now  again  master  of  a  power- 
ful army  which  could  be  used  against  that  party  and 
the  senate.  The  senate  immediately  recalled  to  Italy 
from  the  East  not  only  Marcus  Brutus  but  also  Cassius 
who,  though  with  less  celerity  and  good  fortune  than 
his  friend,  had  also  succeeded  in  raising  an  army  in 
Syria  where  he  had  removed  Dolabella  from  his  path. 
They  also  recalled  the  legions  stationed  in  Africa  under 
the  orders  of  Cornificius,  and  they  placed  in  command 
of   the  fleet  with  the  title  of  prcBJectiis  classis  et  ora 


26  The  Third  Civil  War 

maritimcB,  Sextus,  the  surviving  son  of  Pompey,  who 
had  emerged  from  the  hiding  place  in  the  extreme  West 
of  Spain  which  had  sheltered  him  since  Munda,  and 
who  was  now  granted  powers  similar  to  those  held  by 
his  father  during  the  war  with  the  pirates.'  An  ex- 
traordinary contribution  was  levied  all  over  Italy,  and 
the  command  against  Antony  was  entrusted  to  Oc- 
tavius. 

In  the  meantime  Decimus  Brutus  was  descending 
into  Gallia  Narbonensis  by  the  Val  d'Aosta  and  the 
little  St.  Bernard,  and  joined  Plancus  at  Grenoble. 
Decimus  and  Plancus  had  between  them  fifteen  legions, 
Lepidus  and  Antony  fourteen.  It  would  have  been 
difficult  for  them  to  withstand  a  simultaneous  attack 
by  Decimus  and  Plancus  on  one  side  and  by  Octavian, 
who  now  had  eight  legions,  on  the  other.  Octavian 
had  thus  come  to  be  the  master  of  the  situation  since 
the  party  he  joined  would  thereby  acquire  a  decisive 
superiority  of  force  in  the  West.  Lepidus  understood 
this  so  well  that  he  at  once  opened  negotiations  with 
Octavian  with  a  view  to  a  reconciliation  with  Antony, 
appealing  to  the  great  name  of  Caesar  to  whom  they  all 
owed  so  much.  Octavian,  however,  understood  the 
situation  as  well  as  Lepidus;  he  reflected  that  both 
consular  offices  were  vacant  by  the  deaths  of  Hirtius 
and  Pansa,  and  he  had  formed  the  plan  of  profiting  by 
the  situation  to  be  made  consul  with  Cicero  as  his 
colleague. 

A  consul  of  nineteen  years  of  age  was  a  constitu- 
tional scandal  the  like  of  which  had  never  been  seen  at 
Rome.  But  the  times  were  so  troublous,  and  the 
dangers  so  imminent  that  Cicero,  who  now  personified 

"  This  title  is  preserved  on  his  coins.  Cf.  Cohen,  Monnaies 
romaines,  i.,  pp.  19  and  20. 


Triumviri  ReipubliccB  ConstituendcB       27 

Rome  and  the  senate  in  the  supreme  struggle,  was  not 
disinclined  to  allow  the  young  man  the  supreme  hon- 
our in  the  State,  himself  participating.  The  senate, 
however,  unanimously  revolted  against  this  monstrous 
illegality,  and  thereupon  Octavian  began  to  lend  a 
willing  ear  to  the  proposals  of  Lepidus.  A  secret  agree- 
ment was  concluded,  and  immediately  afterwards 
Octavian  executed  a  sudden  volte  face  and  again  pre- 
sented himself  to  his  soldiers  as  the  son  and  heir  of 
Cassar.  By  vehement  speeches  he  rekindled  their 
admiration  for  his  father,  swore  that  if  he  had  been 
made  consul  he  would  have  given  them  all  the  rewards 
which  Caesar  had  promised,  and  persuaded  them  to 
send  a  deputation  of  centurions  to  Rome  to  demand 
from  the  senate  the  supreme  authority  for  their  general. 
The  senate  refused  and  Octavian  marched  on  Rome 
with  his  legions.  On  this  the  senate  vacillated,  and 
now  hastened  to  concede  what  had  before  been  vainly 
demanded  of  them,  namely  the  grant  of  20,000  ses- 
terces per  head  to  all  Octavian's  legions,  his  appoint- 
ment to  the  commission  appointed  to  distribute  lands 
to  the  soldiers,  and  permission  to  stand  for  the  consul- 
ship even  though  absent  from  Rome.  But  the  news 
of  the  arrival  of  the  legions  from  the  province  of  Africa 
was  enough  to  make  the  senate  immediatel}'  withdraw 
all  these  concessions.  Thereupon  Octavian  entered 
Rome  with  his  army  but  without  opposition  or  blood- 
shed, and  the  forces  on  which  the  senate  had  for  a 
moment  relied  very  soon  declared  for  him.  On  August 
19th,  he  was  elected  consul  with  Q.  Pedius,  another  of 
Caesar's  heirs.  Then  came  to  pass  what  the  Pom- 
peians  and  the  conspirators  had  been  dreading  for 
more  than  a  year.  After  having  secured  the  valida- 
tion of  Octavian's  adoption  by  the  comitia  centuriata, 


28  The  Third  Civil  War 

and  having  paid  part  of  Caesar's  legacy  to  the  soldiers 
and  the  citizens  out  of  the  public  treasury  the  two 
new  consuls  did  what  Antony  had  never  ventured  to 
do.  They  caused  the  comitia  to  pass  a  law  whereby 
all  the  authors  of  Caesar's  death  and  their  accom- 
plices were  to  be  brought  before  a  special  tribunal  and 
condemned  to  the  interdictio  aqua  et  igni  with  the 
confiscation  of  all  their  property. 

Cicero's  masterpiece,  the  amnesty  of  March  17,  44, 
was  shattered.  Thanks  to  Octavian's  incredible 
volte  face  the  Caesarian  party  had  carried  all  before 
them  at  Rome  and  now  had  in  their  power  a  terrible 
weapon  against  the  party  of  the  conspirators.  They 
were  not  long  in  making  use  of  it.  Octavian's  friends 
divided  the  conspirators  among  them,  each  selecting 
the  one  whom  he  should  accuse,  and  in  a  few  days 
they  were  all  condemned  in  contumaciam .  Graver  still 
was  the  effect  of  this  triumph  of  Caesar's  party  at  Rome 
on  the  Western  armies.  Caesarian  enthusiasm,  long 
repressed,  burst  forth  in  all  of  them,  even  in  those 
serving  under  generals  who  remained  faithful  to  the 
party  of  the  conspirators,  and  drove  them  to  rebel 
against  the  authority  of  the  senate  and  to  declare  for 
the  three  new  heads  of  the  Caesarian  party.  The  army 
of  Asinius  PolHo  in  Spain,  and  in  Gallia  Transalpina 
the  troops  of  L.  Munatius  Plancus  which  had  been 
joined  by  those  of  Decimus  Brutus,  revolted.  As  for 
Decimus,  when  he  endeavoured  to  lead  his  troops  to 
Macedonia  they  gradually  abandoned  their  general,  at 
first  in  small  bodies  and  then  in  large  masses,  until  at 
last  Decimus  himself  was  captured  and  murdered  by 
the  chief  of  a  barbarous  Alpine  tribe.  With  Decimus 
the  senate  and  the  party  of  the  conspirators  lost  their 
last  general  in  the  West,  where  Antony,  Lepidus,  and 


Triumviri  ReipuhliccB  Constituendce      29 

Octavian  were  victorious  all  along  the  line  and  came 
to  a  definite  agreement  for  the  partition  of  the  empire, 
assuming  the  style  of  triumviri  reipubliccB  constitu- 
endce. The  two  former  quitted  the  province  in  which 
they  were  residing  and  Octavian  left  Rome,  after  se- 
curing the  passage  of  a  law  annulling  the  double  con- 
demnation of  Antony  and  Lepidus,  and  all  three  met 
not  far  from  Bononia  (Bologna)  and  the  Via  Emilia 
on  a  little  island  at  the  confluence  of  the  Rhenus 
(Reno)  and  the  Lavinius  (Lavino)  where,  after  three 
long  days  of  conference,  they  drew  up  the  programme 
of  the  new  government. 

The  first  and  most  serious  problem  which  faced  the 
triumvirs  was  undoubtedly  that  of  satisfying  the 
pledges  which  they  had  made  to  their  legions,  which 
ntmibered  forty-three,  making  250,000  men  to  whom 
they  had  made  many  promises.  In  order  to  give 
effect  to  these  promises  they  calculated  that  about 
800  million  sesterces  would  be  necessary.  But  they 
were  at  the  end  of  their  resources.  The  treasury  was 
empty;  the  richest  provinces  were  in  the  hands  of  the 
conspirators,  and  Italy  had  proved  very  unwilling  to 
submit  to  the  extraordinary  contributions  which  the 
senate  had  decreed  shortly  before.  On  the  other  hand 
it  was  necessary  to  take  the  offensive  against  the  con- 
spirators without  delay  and  to  conquer  them  before 
they  had  time  to  become  too  strong  in  the  East.  For 
this  also  ample  means  would  be  necessary,  and  where 
were  they  to  be  found  ?  Under  the  stress  of  necessity 
the  triumvirs  decided  to  have  recourse  to  a  terrible 
expedient  which  had  been  unknown  in  the  Roman 
world  since  the  days  of  Marius  and  Sulla.  This  was 
the  confiscation  of  property  of  the  rich  families  who 
did  not  belong  to  the  Caesarian  party  and  had  been 


30  The  Third  Civil  War 

either  hostile  or  neutral  in  the  conflict  between  the 
Pompeians  and  the  Caesarians. 

The  power  of  the  triumvirs  placed  at  their  disposal 
the  means  of  doing  this  legally,  for  it  had  been  made 
to  include  the  power  to  make  laws,  penal  jurisdiction 
without  restriction,  right  of  appeal  or  forms  of  process, 
the  right  to  impose  taxes,  to  raise  levies,  to  command 
armies,  govern  provinces,  appoint  senators,  magis- 
trates and  governors,  the  power  to  expropriate,  to 
found  colonies,  and  to  coin  money.  Antony,  Lepidus, 
and  Octavian  who  successively  arrived  in  Rome  on 
November  24th, 25th,  and  26th,  each  with  one  legion  and 
its  respective  praetorian  cohort,  actually  received  this 
practically  unlimited  triumviral  power  on  November 
27th  under  the  terms  of  the  Lex  Titia  which  con- 
ferred it  upon  them  for  five  years,  that  is,  until  Decem- 
ber 31st  of  the  year  38.'  Thereupon  commenced  the 
great  proscriptions  which  served  incidentally  to  gratify 
political  vendettas  and  personal  animosities,  but 
aimed  above  all  at  dispoiling  the  richer  classes  of  Italy 
for  the  benefit  of  the  veterans  and  the  troops  generally. 
This  explains  the  number  of  the  victims  who  were  not 
only  robbed  but  condemned  to  death  in  order  to  pre- 
vent those  who  had  suffered  by  the  confiscations  from 
swelling  the  ranks  of  the  army  of  the  conspirators.  In 
a  few  days,  by  the  mere  operation  of  decrees  issued  by 
the  triumvirs,  and  without  the  slightest  pretence  of  a 
trial,  a  great  part  of  the  landed  aristocracy  and  the 
higher  ranks  of  the  plutocracy  of  Italy  was  exter- 
minated. The  finest  villas  of  Latium  and  Campania, 
an  infinite  number  of  properties  all  over  Italy,  the 
great  domains  of  Magna  Graecia  and  Sicily,  the  vast 
estates  which  senators  and  knights  possessed  in  Cisal- 

•  Cf.  C.  I.  L.,  i.,  p.  466. 


Triumviri  Reipublicce  ConstitiiendcE       31 

pine  Gaul  or  outside  Italy,  the  live  stock,  the  familia 
of  slaves,  the  objects  of  value,  plate,  statues,  furniture, 
carpets,  which  adorned  their  fine  houses  in  Italy  to- 
gether with  the  gold  and  silver  found  therein — all  was 
seized  and  put  up  for  sale.  Among  the  victims  the 
most  illustrious  was  Cicero,  whom  Antony  would  not 
pardon. ' 

But  the  result  which  is  usual  in  such  cases  followed. 
The  property  which  the  triumvirs  accumulated  was, 
in  the  mass,  enormous,  but  the  proceeds  of  the  sale 
were,  on  the  contrary,  extremely  meagre.  Many  did 
not  dare  to  buy  the  goods  of  the  proscribed,  which 
they  regarded  as  the  seed  of  future  feuds  and  future 
persecutions.'  The  friends  of  the  triumvirs  who  wished 
to  seize  for  themselves  whatever  was  going  took  care 
to  frighten  purchasers  away.  In  short,  amid  the 
terrible  disorder  of  the  moment,  capital  was  terrified 
and  hid  itself.  The  triumvirs  were  therefore  com- 
pelled to  suspend  these  forced  sales,  to  wait  for  better 
days,  and  to  think  of  some  other  expedient  for  raising 
money.  They  ordered  the  confiscation  of  the  money 
deposited  by  private  persons  in  the  sacred  temple  of 
Vesta.  All  foreigners  and  freedmen  who  possessed 
as  much  as  400,000  sesterces  were  ordered  to  register 
the  amount  of  their  possessions  and  to  lend  to  the 
State  a  sum  equivalent  to  two  per  cent  of  the  whole 
plus  a  year's  income  which,  in  doubtful  cases,  was  to 
be  reckoned  at  one-tenth  of  the  capital.^  Roman 
citizens  possessing  less  than  400,000  sesterces  were 
compelled  to  make  a  contribution  equal  to  one-half 

'  On  the  proscriptions  and  their  character  cf.  G.  Ferrero,  The 
Greatness  and  Decline  of  Rome,  vol.   iii.,  p.  182. 

*  This  seems  to  be  the  result  if  we  harmonize  App.,  B.  C,  iv., 
34,  and  Dion  Cass.,  xlvii.,  16. 


32  The  Third  Civil  War 

of  a  whole  year's  income,  and  the  richest  of  the  Italian 
matrons  (to  the  number  of  about  1300)  were  invited  to 
declare  the  value  of  their  dowries.  It  was  decided 
to  confiscate  the  goods  not  only  of  the  proscribed,  but 
also  of  all  who  were  in  voluntary  exile,  the  emigres 
of  that  time.  Then,  and  not  till  then,  the  triumvirs 
judged  the  moment  opportune  to  leave  Italy,  which 
had  been  squeezed  dry  and  bled  white,  in  order  to 
commence  the  final  war  against  the  conspirators.  In 
the  spring  of  42,  eight  legions,  the  advance  guard  of  the 
army  of  the  triumvirs,  crossed  the  Adriatic  and  moved 
in  the  direction  of  Macedonia. 

7.  Philippi.  Marcus  Brutus  had  meanwhile 
evacuated  Macedonia  and  had  betaken  himself  to 
Asia  Minor  with  his  whole  army,  perhaps  with  the 
object  of  collecting  money  and  taking  up  winter 
quarters  in  a  country  which  was  richer  and  further 
from  Italy  than  Macedonia.  At  Smyrna  he  had  a 
conference  with  Cassius  and  they  decided  to  unite 
their  forces  to  fight  the  triumvirs.  But,  while  Brutus 
would  have  wished  to  return  immediately  to  Mace- 
donia to  drive  out  Antony's  eight  legions,  Cassius  was 
in  favour  of  a  more  ambitious  plan.  This  was  in  the 
first  place  to  secure  the  whole  of  the  East,  and  above 
all  Egypt,  where  Queen  Cleopatra  remained  faithful 
to  the  Caesarian  cause,  next  to  seize  the  command  of 
the  sea  in  order  to  cut  the  communications  between 
Italy  and  Macedonia,  and  then,  and  not  before,  to 
attack  the  army  of  the  triumvirs  inMacedonia.  With- 
out the  command  of  the  sea  it  would  be  impossible  for 
the  triumvirs  to  maintain  a  large  army  in  Macedonia, 
and  for  the  moment  the  sea  was  held  by  Sextus  Pom- 
peius,  who,  fortified  by  the  senate's  commission,  had 
taken  command  of  the  naval  forces  of  the  republic 


Philippi  33 

immediately  after  Antony's  final  defeat  at  Mutina, 
had  occupied  Sicily,  and  was  now  engaged  in  collecting 
ships,  recruiting  sailors,  and  organizing  legions  every- 
where, raiding  the  Italian  coast  and  intercepting  the 
cargoes  of  grain  which  were  being  sent  to  Rome  by 
sea.  Cassius's  plan  was  therefore  adopted,  and  there- 
after Cassius  and  Brutus  separated.  Cassius  went  to 
conquer  Rhodes,  to  obtain  money  and  shipping  in 
Asia  and  to  try  to  intercept  the  subsidies  which  Cleo- 
patra was  preparing  for  the  triiunvirate.  Brutus  went 
to  undertake  the  conquest  of  the  confederation  of  the 
Lycian  republics. 

These  enterprises  were  successfully  carried  out  and, 
at  the  end  of  the  siunmer,  Brutus  and  Cassius  prepared 
to  invade  Macedonia  and  to  overthrow  the  eight 
legions  sent  by  Antony.  On  the  other  side  Antony's 
first  attempts  to  break  up  his  opponents'  plan  came 
to  nothing.  Octavian,  whom  he  had  sent  to  Sicily 
against  Sextus  Pompeius,  failed  in  his  mission. 
Cleopatra's  subsidies  were  scattered  by  a  storm,  and 
the  fleet  of  Cassius  under  the  command  of  a  certain 
Statius  Murcus,  being  thus  freed  from  its  task,  at 
once  sailed  to  Italy  to  blockade  Antony  in  Brundusium 
at  the  very  time  when  Brutus  and  Cassius  were  on 
their  way  to  Macedonia,  and  Antony  was  preparing 
to  take  reinforcements  thither  in  order  to  save  his 
eight  legions  from  the  new  catastrophe  which  was 
threatening  them. 

Antony  was  compelled  to  recall  from  Sicily  the  fleet 
commanded  by  Octavian  and  it  was  only  by  its  assist- 
ance that  he  was  able  to  compel  Murcus  to  give  him 
passage  and  to  disembark  twelve  legions  at  Dyrrhach- 
ium  (Durazzo) .  With  these  he  joined  the  eight  legions 
already  sent  and  moved  against  Brutus  and  Cassius. 

VOL.  II — 3 


34  TJic  Third  Civil  War 

They  were  encamped  at  Philippi  in  a  formidable  posi- 
tion and  had  entrenched  themselves  in  two  camps, 
Brutus  a  little  to  the  north,  Cassius  more  to  the  south. 
Both  camps  communicated,  by  way  of  the  great  Via 
Egnatia,  with  the  harbour  of  Neapolis  where  ships 
brought  food  and  arm.s  every  day  from  Asia  and  from 
the  neighbouring  island  of  Thasus  which  the  conspira- 
tors had  chosen  as  their  general  depot.  Antony  suc- 
ceeded in  pitching  his  own  camp  directly  opposite  to 
that  of  the  two  conspirators,  but  not  in  bringing  about 
the  immediate  and  decisive  battle  he  had  come  to  seek. 
The  respective  situations  of  the  two  armies  them- 
selves showed  clearly  which  role  was  assigned  to  each. 
It  was  the  business  of  the  conspirators  to  assume  the 
defensive  and  to  await  the  day  when  hunger  and  sedi- 
tion should  have  triumphed  over  an  army  more  numer- 
ous than  their  own  but  encamped  in  an  inhospitable 
country  and  (since  Cassius  had  reinforced  his  fleet  with 
a  second  squadron  under  Domitius  Ahenobarbus)  with 
no  secure  control  of  the  sea.  It  was  necessary  on  the 
other  hand  for  Antony,  and  for  Octavian  who  had 
accompanied  him,  to  force  the  fighting  with  their 
enemy  whose  forces  were  weaker  than  theirs,  to  pro- 
voke him  to  battle  and  secure  a  decision  as  soon  as 
possible.  A  desperate  struggle  therefore  began,  in  the 
course  of  which  Brutus  and  Cassius  opposed  an  un- 
wearied patience  to  Antony's  daily  provocations  to 
battle.  In  the  end  Antony  conceived  the  idea  of 
constructing  a  road  across  the  marsh  which  separated 
the  camp  of  Cassius  from  the  sea,  thus  menacing  him 
in  the  rear.  The  danger  was  serious  and  accordingly, 
in  the  second  half  of  October,  Cassius  and  Brutus  one 
day  made  a  sortie,  probably  with  the  intention  of  in- 
terrupting   this    threatening    operation.     The    right 


Philippi  35 

wing  under  the  command  of  Brutus  threw  itself  on 
Octavian's  legions,  the  left  under  Cassius  on  those  of 
Antony.  A  singular  conflict  ensued.  The  legions  of 
Octavian,  taken  by  surprise  and  not  assisted  by  the 
presence  of  their  general,  who  was  forced  to  fly  and  to 
hide  in  a  neighbouring  morass,  were  completely  de- 
feated, and  their  camp  was  sacked.  On  the  other 
hand,  Antony's  men  threw  themselves  on  Cassius's 
force  and  pursued  them  even  into  their  camp.  Neither 
of  the  victorious  generals  could  extricate  his  troops 
from  the  confusion  of  plundering,  and  thus  crown  his 
victorious  beginning  with  complete  success.  In  the 
evening  each  army  retired  half-defeated  to  its  own 
camp.  But  in  the  melee  Cassius  had  perished — it  is 
not  clear  how — and  the  army  of  the  conspirators  was 
thus  deprived  of  its  one  real  prop  and  stay. 

The  skirmish  converted  into  a  fierce  encounter  had 
nevertheless  decided  the  war.  Brutus  had  neither 
the  energy  nor  the  military  ability  of  Cassius ;  he  was 
both  weak  and  weary.  If  he  had  had  the  strength  to 
wait  a  little  longer  it  is  possible  that  the  forces  of  his 
adversaries  might  have  broken  up,  as  they  were  in 
want  of  food  and  money,  and  the  reinforcements  of 
men  and  provisions  which  they  expected  from  Italy 
had  been  sent  to  the  bottom  by  the  united  fleets  of 
Murcus  and  x^henobarbus.  But  his  officers,  his  princi- 
pal oriental  allies,  and  his  troops  themselves  were  im- 
patient to  finish  the  campaign,  and  cried  out  loudly  for 
battle,  threatening  every  day,  like  the  Cassarian  veter- 
ans in  the  service  of  the  coalition,  that  they  would 
revolt  or  desert.  Antony  on  the  other  hand,  in  view  of 
the  desperate  plight  of  his  army,  spared  no  effort  to 
provoke  a  final  encounter  and  threatened  a  movement 
to  cut  his  opponents'  communications  with  the  sea. 


36  The  Third  Civil  War 

One  day  Brutus  allowed  the  order  for  battle  to  be 
extorted  from  him  and  the  final  contest  between 
Caesarians  and  Pompeians,  between  the  two  great 
cliques  which  had  divided  the  nobility,  was  decided 
in  the  plain  of  Philippi  on  a  dismal  day  in  the  month  of 
November,  42.  Brutus  was  vanquished,  and,  hav- 
ing retired  with  a  small  group  of  friends  to  a  little 
valley  in  the  neighbourhood,  the  murderer  of  Caesar 
took  his  own  life  with  stoical  serenity,  assisted  by  a 
Greek  rhetorician  who  had  been  his  teacher. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  VICISSITUDES  AND  THE  FALL  OF  THE  TRIUMVIRATE 

8.  The  War  of  Perusia  (41-40  B.  C).  The  pro- 
scriptions of  the  year  43  and  the  massacre  which 
followed  the  two  battles  of  Philippi  have  an  importance 
which  transcends  that  of  the  political  history  of  these 
months  or  the  military  results  of  these  two  engage- 
ments. For  in  them  many  of  the  most  ancient  and 
illustrious  families  of  the  Roman  nobility  either 
disappeared  altogether  or  hopelessly  declined,  owing 
to  the  loss  of  some  of  their  members.  That  nobility 
which  had  governed  Rome  for  so  many  centuries  and 
had  managed  to  survive  the  great  wars  between 
Marius  and  Sulla,  received  in  this  final  civil  war  a 
mortal  blow  from  which  it  was  not  destined  to  re- 
cover. The  whole  of  the  confused  history  of  the  first 
century  of  the  empire  was  nothing  but  the  working 
out  of  the  irreparable  decadence  of  the  nobility  which 
had  created  the  empire  but  which  was  now  to  have 
neither  the  men  nor  the  families  nor  the  resources 
nor  the  abilities  which  were  necessary  for  its  govern- 
ment, because  all  these  had  been  swallowed  up  in 
the  civil  wars.  The  profound  eftects  of  this  destruc- 
tion, however,  became  apparent  only  by  degrees. 
For  the  moment  the  proscriptions  and  the  battles  of 
Philippi  seemed  merely  to  abolish  all  opposition  to 

37 


-v.r/ 


38    Vicissitudes  mid  Fall  of  the  Triumvirate 

the  Caesarian  party.  The  handful  of  survivors  who 
had  escaped  b}^  sea,  and  even  Sextus  Pompeius  with 
his  fleet,  could  not  hope  to  change  the  fortunes  of 
war.  Philippi  had  been  an  irrevocable  confirmation 
of  Pharsalia. 

The  Triumvirs,  nevertheless,  were  confronted  with 
terrible  diihculties.  They  had  in  the  first  place  to  pay 
their  innumerable  soldiers  the  promised  20,000  sester- 
ces per  head,  as  well  as  the  arrears  of  their  pay,  and 
they  had  no  money.  They  had  to  disband  a  portion 
of  the  army,  and,  as  regards  the  veterans  of  Cassar, 
they  had  to  carry  out  the  old  pledges  given  to  them 
by  the  dictator  and  confirmed  by  the  triimivirate. 
It  was,  moreover,  necessary  to  re-establish  their  own 
authority  and  that  of  Rome  in  the  East  which 
had  been  turned  upside  down  by  the  civil  war,  and 
which  swarmed  with  pretenders  who  were  waging 
war  with  each  other.  Finally  they  had  to  re-establish 
the  authority  of  the  triumvirate  in  Italy  itself,  where 
(a  thing  unheard  of  in  the  Roman  world)  Lepidus 
had  surrendered  the  reins  of  goverrmient  to  a  woman, 
Antony's  wife,  Fulvia. 

It  was  decided  to  disband  the  eight  legions  of 
Csesar's  veterans,  to  reduce  the  army  to  32  legions, 
dividing  the  whole  between  Antony  and  Octavian, 
the  share  of  the  former  being  seventeen  and  of  the 
latter  fifteen  legions.  By  this  arrangement  Lepidus 
surrendered  the  three  legions  he  had  hitherto  com- 
manded. It  was  further  agreed  that  Antony,  in 
addition  to  the  East,  should  have  Gallia  Narbonensis, 
while  Octavian  should  take  Spain  which  had  hitherto 
belonged  to  Lepidus.  Lepidus,  therefore,  because  of 
his  weakness  and  ineptitude  and  (it  was  added  in 
justification  of  the  treatment  he  received)  because  of 


The  War  of  Perusia  39 

certain  alleged  secret  overtures  to  Sextus  Pompeius,  ^ 
was  to  be  completely  excluded  from  all  share  in  the 
government  of  the  provinces.  Finally  Antony  was 
to  leave  at  once  for  the  East  to  bring  about  its  pacifica- 
tion and  to  collect  money,  while  Octavian  was  to 
betake  himself  to  Italy  to  make  war  on  Sextus,  and  to 
make  a  final  distribution  of  land  to  his  father's  vete- 
rans. This  was  far  from  being  an  easy  task,  since  it 
involved  giving  seven  or  eight  thousand  men  two 
hundred  iugera  per  head.  Tliis  meant  that  he  had  to 
find  eight  or  nine  hundred  thousand  acres  of  good 
land  in  Italy,  a  country  where  hardly  any  public 
land  was  left.  It  was  necessary  once  more  to  have 
recourse  to  violent  measures,  and  it  was  decided 
to  assign  to  the  seven  or  eight  thousand  veterans 
land  situated  in  the  territory  belonging  to  the  eighteen 
finest  and  richest  Italian  cities,  depriving  each  pro- 
prietor therein  of  a  portion  of  his  goods  and  com- 
pensating him  with  an  indemnity  to  be  fixed  by  the 
triimivirs  themselves  and  to  be  paid  when  they  were 
in  a  position  to  do  so. 

The  plan  was  ingenious,  and  all  that  remained  was 
to  carry  it  out.  No  one  could  foresee  that  the  gravest 
difficulties  would  arise  from  vvithin  the  triumvirate 
itself.  They  did  not  come  from  Lepidus,  a  mediocre 
person,  who  was  content  to  accept  the  secondary  r61e 
which  had  been  assigned  to  him,  but  from  Antony's 
wife  Fulvia,  and  from  his  brother  Lucius,  who  was 
consul  for  the  year.  Lucius  and  Fulvia  were  now 
counting  on  being  able  to  govern  Rome  and  Italy 
without  control  or  interference,  the  former  as  the 
brother,  the  latter  as  the  wife  of  the  man  who  had 
been  the  real  victor  of  Philippi. 

•C/.  App.,  5.  C,  v.,  3. 


40    Vicissitudes  and  Fall  of  the  Triumvirate 

Thus  it  was  that,  when  Octavian  returned  to  Italy 
and  tried  to  exercise  his  authority,  violent  dissensions 
immediately  arose  between  the  triumvir  on  one  side 
and  Lucius  and  Fulvia  on  the  other.  These  dissen- 
sions rapidly  became  embittered  and  reached  such 
a  point  that,  when  Octavian  began  to  expropriate 
forcibly  the  Italian  landowners  in  order  to  give  their 
lands  to  the  veterans,  Fulvia  and  Lucius  openly  took 
the  part  of  the  expropriated  possessors  and  affirmed 
that  Mark  Antony  did  not  wish  them  to  be  deprived. 
Savage  agitation  thereupon  ensued  which  ended  in  a 
new  civil  war.  Fulvia  and  Lucius  Antonius,  by  using 
the  prestige  of  the  triumvir's  name  and  by  promising 
money,  contrived  to  raise  an  army  among  the  land- 
owners who  had  already  been,  or  who  feared  to  be 
expropriated,  among  the  veterans  of  Csesar  and 
Antony,  and  among  the  survivors  of  the  Pompeian 
and  aristocratic  party.  Having  done  so  they  sud- 
denly invited  all  Italy  to  fight  with  them  for  the 
destruction  of  the  triumvirate  which,  now  that  Brutus 
and  Cassius  were  no  more,  had  lost  its  raison  d'etre 
and  for  the  restoration  of  the  free  republic  in  accord- 
ance (as  they  affirmed)  with  the  intention  of  Antony 
who  was  now  restoring  order  in  the  East.  Octavian, 
however,  after  various  obscure  vicissitudes,  succeeded 
in  shutting  up  and  besieging  Lucius  in  Perusia  (Peru- 
gia) in  the  autumn  of  41.  In  March  of  the  following 
year  Lucius  was  reduced  to  extremities  and  was 
forced  to  surrender  to  Marcus  Vipsanius  Agrippa,  the 
general  whom  Octavian  had  charged  with  this  siege, 
and  who  had  hitherto  been  known  only  as  one  of 
the  most  implacable  persecutors  of  the  conspirators. 
Octavian  did  not  wish  to  anger  his  powerful  colleague 
and  treated  his  brother  kindly.     He  left  Lucius  at 


The  War  of  Perusia  41 

liberty,  pardoned  his  soldiers,  and  merely  put  to 
death  the  decuriones  of  the  city  and  some  of  the 
senators  and  knights  who  had  been  made  prisoners, 
and  abandoned  Perusia  to  be  sacked  by  his  troops. 
Thus  the  most  serious  obstacle  to  the  policy  agreed 
upon  after  Philippi  had  been  removed,  but  at  what 
a  price! 

Fulvia  embarked  at  Brundusium  to  join  the  triumvir 
in  the  East  and  with  her  went  many  eminent  members 
of  Antony's  party  who  had  been  compromised  in 
the  last  outbreak  of  civil  war,  among  others  Tiberius 
Claudius  Nero,  who  in  these  terrible  days  sailed  fur- 
tively from  Naples  with  his  wife  Livia,  the  future 
spouse  of  Augustus  and  a  little  boy  of  about  two  years 
old  who  was  destined  one  day  to  be  the  Emperor 
Tiberius.  What  was  to  be  the  end  of  this  contest? 
Many  feared  a  new  and  more  terrible  civil  war. 
Antony,  however,  had  never  approved  of  the  war 
against  his  colleague,  which  in  fact  had  been  an  im- 
prudent outburst  against  his  own  veterans,  contrary 
alike  to  the  pact  of  Philippi  and  to  the  general  interests 
of  the  State.  At  that  moment,  moreover,  he  was 
revolving  other  plans  in  his  mind,  and  was  preoccupied 
with  other  difficulties.  After  reorganizing  the  East 
to  the  best  of  his  ability  he  had  gone  to  spend  the 
winter  of  41-40  at  Alexandria  as  the  guest  of  Cleo- 
patra, who  was  trying  with  him  the  same  scheme  as 
previously  with  Csesar.  That  is  to  say,  she  was  en- 
deavouring to  persuade  him  to  marry  her,  to  become 
King  of  Egypt  and  to  remove  the  seat  of  empire  to 
Alexandria.  It  does  not  appear  that  Cleopatra  had 
succeeded  in  winning  him  over.  On  the  contrary 
it  is  probable  that  he  was  then  thinking  of  resuming 
the  design  of  Csesar  against  the  Parthians  who,  in 


42    Vicissitudes  and  Fall  of  the  Triumvirate 

the  spring  of  40  had  made  a  great  and  dangerous  raid 
on  Syria  at  the  instigation  of  an  agent  of  Brutus 
and  Cassius,  Q.  Labienus,  the  young  son  of  Caesar's 
lieutenant  who  had  fallen  at  Ilerda.  It  was  therefore 
not  unnatural  that,  when,  on  his  return  from  Egypt, 
he  met  Fulvia  at  Athens  he  severely  rebuked  the 
conduct  of  his  representatives  in  Italy  and  disap- 
pointed all  their  hopes. 

This  would  have  been  the  end  of  the  matter  if 
Octavian,  who  shared  the  anxieties  felt  by  all  Italy 
about  Antony's  real  intentions,  had  not  taken  advan- 
tage of  the  death  of  the  governor  of  Gallia  Narbonensis 
to  intrigue  for  the  transfer  to  his  command  of  the 
legions  stationed  in  that  province  which  were  under 
the  orders  of  Antony.  This  act  inevitably  led  to  war. 
Antony,  who  wished  to  recover  his  legions,  accepted 
the  alliance  of  Sextus  Pompeius  and  the  help  offered 
by  Domitius  Ahenobarbus,  the  former  ally  of  Brutus 
and  Cassius,  who  was  under  the  ban  of  the  lex  Pedia, 
and  who,  like  Sextus,  had  continued  to  command  his 
fleet  in  defiance  of  the  fulminations  of  the  triiimvirate. 
The  forces  thus  united  were  concentrated  for  an 
attack  on  the  Adriatic  coasts  of  Italy  and  at  once 
appeared  off  Brundusium. 

9.  The  Treaty  of  Brundusium  and  the  Pact  of 
Misenum  (40-39  B.C.)-  As  a  result  of  Octavian's 
imprudence,  and  as  everybody  had  feared,  there 
began  yet  another  civil  war.  As  before,  however, 
the  two  belligerents  were  operating  with  soldiers 
who  until  the  day  before  the  conflict  had  been  com- 
panions in  arms  and  who,  while  they  looked  very 
much  askance  at  a  struggle  between  Antony  and 
Octavian,  were  still  less  disposed  to  forward  the 
ambitions  and  the  interests  of  Sextus  Pompeius  and 


The  Treaty  of  Brundusium  43 

an  ex-conspirator  like  Domitius  Ahenobarbus.  Their 
doubtful  attitude  was  therefore  sufficient  to  stop  the 
nascent  war  and  to  impel  the  two  competitors  to  an 
agreement.  Antony,  like  Octavian,  was  forced  to 
bow  to  the  wishes  of  the  troops  who  were  against 
fighting.  Thus  it  came  about  that,  in  the  autumn  of 
40,  the  representatives  of  both  sides  met  in  the  town 
of  Brundusium  and  entered  into  a  new  convention 
whereby  all  the  East,  including  Macedonia,  Greece, 
Bithynia,  Asia  Minor,  Syria,  and  the  Cyrenaica,  was 
given  to  Antony ;  the  West,  comprising  Gallia,  Transal- 
pina,  and  Gallia  Narbonensis,  fell  to  Octavian;  while 
Lepidus  received  only  Africa  as  his  share.  On  the 
other  hand  the  armies  were  so  distributed  that  Octa- 
vian had  sixteen  legions,  Antony  nineteen,  with,  in 
addition,  the  right  to  raise  new  levies  even  in  Italy, 
while  Lepidus  got  only  six.  Sextus  Pompeius  was 
abandoned  by  Antony,  so  that  Octavian  was  able  to 
declare  war  immediately  against  him,  and  finally  the 
treaty  of  peace  was  sealed  by  a  marriage.  Fulvia 
had  died  during  the  brief  resumption  of  civil  war  and 
Antony  married  Octavia,  the  sister  of  his  colleague, 
who  had  recently  been  left  a  widow. 

Sextus,  therefore,  was  left  to  the  vengeance  of 
Octavian;  but  behind  the  triumvirs  and  the  legions, 
labouring  and  suffering,  hard  hit  by  the  ruin  of  so 
many  of  her  richest  families,  there  was  still  Italy,  Italy 
from  whom  enormous  taxes  had  been  wrung,  who  had 
suffered  terrible  confiscations,  whose  public  works 
were  at  a  standstill,  whose  public  buildings  and  pri- 
vate houses  were  going  to  ruin,  and  whose  great  roads 
were  in  disrepair.  The  country  was  seething  with 
discontent  and  murmured  against  the  policy  of  the 
triumvirate  which  had  effected  nothing  but  the  dis- 


44   Vicissitudes  and  Fall  of  the  Triumvirate 

tribution  of  lands  to  some  thousands  of  veterans, 
and  which  had  sacrificed  everything — even  the  most 
legitimate  interests  of  the  possessing  classes  which 
had  been  foolish  enough  to  allow  themselves  to  be 
disarmed  by  Marius's  military  reforms — to  the  ap- 
petites of  the  soldiery.  True,  the  general  feeling  of 
anger  had  hitherto  been  suppressed  and  contained 
because  force  was  all  on  the  side  of  the  triimivirate. 
But  the  war  against  Sextus  Pompeius  which  Octavian 
commenced  immediately  after  the  agreement  of  Brun- 
dusium  at  last  provoked  an  outburst.  When  Octavian 
intimated  that  there  would  be  war  taxes  on  legacies 
and  on  slaves,  there  was  a  regular  uprising  of  public 
opinion  in  favour  of  Sextus  Pompeius.  At  Rome  the 
infuriated  populace  tore  down  the  triumviral  edicts 
and  made  tumultuous  demonstrations  of  all  kinds  in 
favour  of  peace.  Such  was  their  violence  and  obsti- 
nacy that  not  only  Octavian  but  Antony  himself  was 
alarmed.  Once  more  it  became  necessary  to  negoti- 
ate for  peace.  The  negotiations  between  Antony  and 
Octavian  on  the  one  side  and  Sextus  on  the  other  were 
long,  but  they  ended  in  an  agreement  reached  in  39 
B.C.  in  the  Gulf  of  Misenum.  Sextus  was  to  have 
Sicily  and  Sardinia  as  well  as  the  Peloponnesus  for 
five  years;  he  was  to  have  the  consulship  in  33;  he 
was  to  be  made  a  member  of  the  College  of  Pontiffs 
and  to  receive  seventy  million  sesterces  as  an  indem- 
nity for  the  confiscation  of  his  father's  property.  In 
return  he  pledged  himself  to  cease  harrying  the  coasts 
of  Italy,  to  deny  any  refuge  to  fugitive  slaves  and  to 
put  down  piracy.  There  was  also  a  condition  of  even 
greater  importance.  This  was  that  the  survivors  of 
the  proscriptions  except  those  who  had  been  con- 
demned for  the  murder  of  Caesar,  and  all  deserters, 


TJie  Treaty  of  Tarentiim  45 

were  to  be  amnestied  and  part  of  their  possessions 
was  to  be  restored  to  them,  while  the  slaves  who  had 
joined  Sextus's  army  were  to  receive  their  liberty. 

Peace  therefore  was  re-established,  and,  what 
seemed  even  more  remarkable,  it  had  not  been  imposed 
by  the  swords  of  the  veterans  but  by  the  invisible 
force  of  public  opinion.  Did  Italy,  then,  still  count 
for  something?  Was  republican  liberty  still  a  living 
thing?  Were  law  and  the  right  of  public  criticism 
after  all  not  crushed  and  wounded  unto  death  by 
the  swords  of  the  legionaries?  These  were  terrible 
questions  which  afforded  Octavian,  now  the  sole 
triumvir  in  Italy,  food  for  profound  and  not  un- 
profitable meditation  during  the  next  ten  years. 

10.  The  Treaty  of  Tarentum  (37  B.C.).  In  the 
later  months  of  39  when  Antony,  leaving  Italy  so 
deeply  disturbed,  returned  to  the  East,  he  found 
excellent  news  awaiting  him  on  his  disembarkation 
at  Athens.  The  Parthians,  who  in  the  previous  year 
had  invaded  Syria  under  the  command  of  Labienus 
and  Pacorus,  the  eldest  son  of  their  king,  had  been 
twice  beaten  by  one  of  Antony's  generals,  first  near 
Mount  Taurus  and  secondly  in  a  defile  of  the  Amanus 
range  at  the  northern  entrance  to  Syria.  The  victorious 
leader  was  a  man  hitherto  obscure,  a  certain  P. 
Ventidius  Bassus  who  had  tried  to  bring  aid  to  Antony 
in  the  war  of  Mutina.  Following  on  these  successes 
Antony  had  definitely  resumed  Caesar's  old  plan  for 
the  conquest  of  Parthia  and  spent  the  whole  winter 
of  39-38  in  making  his  preparations.  In  the  spring, 
however,  he  found  himself  unable  to  commence  the 
expedition,  either  because  his  preparations  were  not 
complete  or  because  the  Parthians  anticipated  him  by 
a  renewed  invasion  of  the  empire,  or  because  of  th^ 


46   Vicissitudes  and  Fall  of  the  Triumvirate 

fresh  quarrel  between  Octavian  and  Sextus  Pompeius 
which  had  again  led  to  war.  He  again  despatched 
Ventidius  Bassus  to  deal  with  the  Parthians,  and,  on 
the  anniversary  of  the  battle  of  Carrhse  Ventidius 
inflicted  on  them  a  memorable  defeat,  Pacorus  himself 
being  slain  in  the  battle.  Antony  next  tried  to  im- 
pede the  war  between  Sextus  and  Octavian  but  did  not 
succeed,  and  in  the  simimer  of  38  Octavian  lost  the 
greater  part  of  his  fleet,  partly  in  a  battle  and  partly 
in  a  storm  which  followed  the  engagement.  On  the 
other  hand  the  powers  of  the  triumvirate  expired  at 
the  end  of  the  year  37,  and  Antony  was  becoming 
more  and  more  attached  to  his  plan  of  completing  the 
conquest  of  Parthia  which  would  make  him  master 
of  the  republic.  He  decided,  therefore,  to  make  use 
of  all  these  contingencies  to  induce  Octavian  to  give 
up  to  him  a  part  of  his  army  which  he  required  for 
the  conquest  of  Parthia,  ceding  in  return  a  part  of  his 
own  fleet  which  would  be  useful  to  his  colleague  for 
the  war  against  Sextus  Pompeius.  In  other  words, 
his  idea  was  to  allow  Octavian  to  wreak  vengeance 
on  Sextus  on  condition  that  Octavian  helped  him  to 
conquer  the  Parthian  empire  and  to  prolong,  on  the 
pretext  of  the  two  wars,  the  powers  of  the  triumvirate. 
Octavian,  however,  much  as  he  wished  to  conquer 
Sextus  Pompeius,  was  by  no  means  willing  to  weaken 
himself  overmuch  to  the  profit  of  his  colleague.  He 
demurred  and  temporized,  set  Agrippa  to  construct  a 
new  fleet,  and  haggled  over  every  detail.  Thus  the 
agreement  which  Antony  desired  so  ardently  was  only 
concluded  at  Tarentum  in  the  spring  of  37.  The  triimi- 
virate  was  to  be  renewed  by  law  for  five  years,  counting 
from  January  1,37.  Antony  was  to  provide  Octavian 
with  130  ships  and  was  to  receive  in  exchange  2i,0(X) 


Antony  and  Cleopatra  47 

men.  The  agreements  of  Misenum  with  Sextus  were 
cancelled  and  Octavian  was  to  have  a  free  hand 
against  him. 

1 1 .  Antony  and  Cleopatra :  the  Nuptials  of  Antioch 
(36  B.C.) .  After  the  agreement  of  Tarentimi,  Octavian 
returned  to  Rome  to  pass  through  the  comitia  the 
law  prolonging  the  power  of  the  triumvirate  until 
January  i,  32,  and  also  to  make  ready  for  war  against 
Sextus.  Antony  returned  to  the  East  to  make  final 
preparations  for  the  Parthian  war,  one  of  the  greatest 
expeditions  which  the  Roman  and  oriental  worlds 
had  ever  seen.  Antony's  plan  of  campaign  was 
identical  with  that  which  had  been  conceived  and 
handed  down  to  him  by  Caesar. '  But  to  carry  out  this 
vast  undertaking,  which  was  to  secure  Antony's 
power  and  glory,  men,  money,  and  munitions  were 
needed  in  abundance.  In  order  to  procure  these 
Antony  decided  on  an  act  which  was  destined  to  have 
the  gravest  consequences.  This  was  to  accept  the 
proposals  of  Cleopatra  whom  he  had  not  seen  for 
three  years,  and  to  become  King  of  Egypt,  marrying 
the  queen  in  order  to  gain  complete  control  of  the 
treasures  of  the  Ptolemies.  At  the  beginning  of  the 
year  36  the  nuptials  of  Antony  and  Cleopatra  were 
solemnized  with  great  pomp  at  Antioch.  Antony 
became  King  of  Egypt,  and  Cleopatra,  in  considera- 
tion of  her  alliance  with  the  triumvir,  was  granted,  in 
addition  to  the  dominions  of  certain  oriental  sovereigns 
who  were  vassals  of  Rome,  some  portions  of  Roman 
territory  which  in  former  days  had  belonged  to  the 
empire  of  the  Ptolemies.     These  were  Cyprus,  part  of 

'  On  this  war  see  the  study  published  by  Kromayer  in  Hermes, 
xxxi.,  po.  70  ff.  Cf.  also  Bouch^-Leclercq,  Histoire  des  Lagides, 
Paris,  1904,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  258  ff. 


48   Vicissitudes  and  Fall  of  the  Triumvirate 

Phoenicia,  the  fertile  palm  groves  of  Jericho,  part  of 
Cilicia  and  Crete.  ^ 

12.  The  War  against  the  Parthians  and  the  War 
against  Sextus  Pompeius  (36  B.  C).  This  was  a 
bold  action,  because  it  broke  completely  with  Roman 
politics  and  traditions.  Antony,  indeed,  did  not  as- 
sume the  title  of  King  of  Egypt  but  retained  that  of 
imperator;  he  did  not  officially  announce  his  marriage 
to  Rome  and  he  took  good  care  not  to  repudiate  his 
lawful  wife,  Octavia.  He  thus  put  himself  in  a  dubi- 
ous and  equivocal  position  which  was  destined  to  be 
the  cause  of  his  ruin.  For  the  moment,  however,  he 
might  hope  to  secure  the  object  of  his  wishes,  for, 
with  the  help  of  Egypt,  he  could  say  at  the  beginning 
of  36  that  all  was  ready  for  the  Parthian  expedition. 
In  the  spring  of  36,  while  Octavian  was  commencing 
operations  against  Sextus  Pompeius,  Antony  marched 
towards  the  frontiers  of  Media,  sending  forward  his 
siege  train,  two  legions,  and  the  contingents  from 
Armenia  and  Pontus  under  the  command  of  Oppius 
Statianus,  by  the  easier,  if  longer,  route  through  the 
valley  of  the  Araxes,  while  he  himself  with  the  mass  of 
the  Roman  infantry  took  a  shorter  but  much  rougher 
and  more  difficult  way.  At  the  end  of  July  he 
reached  the  boundary  of  Armenia  Atropatene.  Hav- 
ing reached  this  point  Antony,  we  know  not  for  what 
reason,  made  his  first  mistake.  Without  awaiting  the 
army  he  had  sent  through  the  valley  of  the  Araxes 
with  his   siege   train,   he   invaded   the   country   and 

»  Cf.  Porphyrius  Tyrius  in  Muller,  Frag.  Hist.  Graec,  iii.,  p. 
724  and  Letronne,  Recueil  des  inscriptions  grecques  et  latines  de 
I'Egypte,  Paris,  1842-48,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  90  flf.  On  the  whole  legend 
of  Antony  and  Cleopatra  cf.  G.  Ferrero,  The  Greatness  and  Decline 
of  Rome,  vol.  iv.,  Appendix. 


TJie  War  against  the  Parthians         49 

marched  on  the  capital,  arriving  under  its  walls, 
without  meeting  any  resistance,  at  the  end  of  August. 
Meanwhile  in  his  rear  Phraates,  King  of  Parthia,  at- 
tacked the  other  Roman  army  at  Gazaca,  succeeded  in 
annihilating  the  two  legions  and  the  siege  train,  and 
forced  the  King  of  Armenia  with  his  valuable  cavalry 
— destined  to  be  the  most  effective  weapon  against 
the  Parthians — to  return  to  his  own  dominions. 

This  was  a  serious  blow.  Antony  had  to  choose 
between  retreating  or  continuing  the  siege  of  the  city 
with  inadequate  means.  He  chose  the  second  alter- 
native, hoping  by  threatening  the  capital  to  provoke 
the  enemy  to  a  pitched  battle  and  so  to  destroy  him. 
But  the  Parthians  were  not  Gauls  of  the  time  of 
Vercingetorix,  nor  was  Antony  Caesar,  and  his  plan  did 
not  succeed.  Meanwhile  winter  was  at  hand.  The 
revictualling  of  the  army  became  every  day  more 
difficult  and  dangerous;  the  besieged  city  resisted 
valorously.  The  soldiers  suborned  by  the  enemy 
murmured  and  averred  that  the  Parthians  were  dis- 
posed to  make  peace.  Antony  had  finally  to  make 
up  his  mind  to  retrace  his  steps,  but,  profiting  by  the 
experience  of  Crassus,  and  fearing  he  might  be  at- 
tacked on  his  retreat,  he  chose  a  route  among  the  hills 
which  was  very  difficult  but  inaccessible  to  cavalry, 
probably  the  road  which  now  runs  through  Tabriz 
and  ends  at  lulfa  on  the  Araxes.  The  retreat,  though 
it  did  not  end  in  a  disaster,  was  most  arduous.  Before 
the  army  reached  a  place  of  safety  it  was  exhausted 
by  fatigue,  by  hunger  and  thirst,  and  by  the  incessant 
attacks  of  the  enemy.  It  had  marched  for  twenty- 
four  days  and  had  suffered  great  losses.  The  great 
undertaking,  the  idea  of  which  Antony  had  inherited 
from  Caesar,  was  a  failure. 


50   Vicissitudes  and   Fall  of  the  Triumvirate 

In  the  year  36  Octavian,  on  the  other  hand,  had  at 
last  succeeded  in  conquering  Sextus  Pompeius.  Al- 
though on  this  occasion  he  disposed  of  superior  forces 
both  on  land  and  sea,  the  commencement  of  the 
operations  had  not  been  fortunate.  After  various 
grave  reverses,  however,  Octavian  managed,  at  the 
end  of  July,  to  disembark  an  army  in  Sicily.  There- 
upon Sextus  as  a  last  resort  attempted  an  attack  on 
his  adversary's  fleet  off  Naulochus,  although  the  latter 
was  in  considerable  force.  There  followed  a  tre- 
mendous battle  in  which  Pompey's  son  was  defeated. 
A  hundred  and  sixty  of  his  ships  were  destroyed  or 
captured.  He  himself  fled,  reappeared  for  a  moment 
at  Messina  and  thence  set  sail  for  the  East,  taking 
with  him  his  daughter  and  his  treasure. 

13.  The  Dissolution  of  the  Triumvirate.  The 
success  of  the  Sicilian  expedition,  more  especially 
when  compared  with  the  failure  of  the  Parthian  enter- 
prise in  the  East,  greatly  improved  Octavian's  posi- 
tion. An  unwise  attempt  made  by  Lepidus  to  bring 
about  a  new  civil  war  and  to  recover  a  position  of 
equality  with  his  two  colleagues  in  the  triumvirate, 
still  further  increased  his  power  and  prestige.  The 
troops  of  Lepidus  refused  to  obey  him  and  deserted  to 
Octavian,  Lepidus  had  to  retire  into  private  life,  and 
the  youthful  triumvir  who  was  only  twenty-seven, 
found  himself  suddenly  at  the  head  of  forty-three 
legions,  six  hundred  ships,  and  an  empire  which  em- 
braced a  great  part  of  northern  Africa,  Spain,  Illyria, 
Gaul,  and  Italy,  and  invested  with  almost  absolute 
authority  in  a  republic  which  appeared  to  be  sinking 
into  the  abyss. 

The  appearance,  however,  was  very  different  from 
the  reality.     At  this  moment,   at  which  his  power 


Tlie  Dissolution  of  the  Triumvirate       51 

seemed  to  be  growing,  the  cruel  tyrant  of  the  previous 
ten  years  began  to  be  transformed  into  the  sagacious, 
merciful,  moderate,  and  modest  prince  who  was  to  be 
the  Emperor  Augustus.  Immediately  on  his  return 
to  Rome  on  November  13th,  he  proclaimed  a  fiscal 
amnesty,  remitting  to  the  taxpayers  the  residue  of  the 
imports  decreed  by  the  triumvirs.  Other  taxes  were 
abolished,  one  of  the  victims  of  the  proscriptions  was 
made  a  supplementary  augur,  and  powers  which  had 
been  usurped  by  the  triumvirs  were  restored  to  certain 
of  the  magistrates.  Octavian  did  his  best  to  avoid 
new  confiscations  in  distributing  lands  to  the  veterans, 
and  all  the  slaves  who  were  found  fighting  under  Sex- 
tus  Pompeius,  as  well  as  all  the  captured  merchant 
vessels,  were  restored  to  their  masters.  He  took 
measures  for  the  suppression  of  brigandage  throughout 
the  peninsula  and  ordered  public  works  on  a  large 
scale  at  Rome,  in  order  that  the  proletariat  of  the 
eternal  city  might  earn  their  bread.  Finally  in  a 
solemn  public  oration  he  declared  himself  prepared 
to  lay  down  the  triimiviral  power  and  to  re-establish 
the  republic,  now  that  the  era  of  civil  strife  was 
ended  and  the  raison  d'etre  of  the  triumvirate  had 
ceased  to  be. 

How  are  we  to  explain  this  change  which  is  little  in 
accord  with  tendencies  so  usual  and  so  profoundly 
rooted  in  human  nature  ever  prone  as  it  is  to  the  abuse 
of  good  fortune?  It  was  influenced  no  doubt  by  inner 
motives,  but  it  was  chiefly  determined  by  political 
necessity.  Notwithstanding  the  blood  that  had  been 
shed,  the  outrages  that  had  been  committed  and  the 
destruction  of  republican  traditions,  the  triumvirate 
had  not  managed  to  do  any  good  either  to  Italy  or  the 
empire.    Its  greatest  achievement  had  been  the  allot- 


52   Vicissitudes  and  Fall  of  the  Triumvirate 

ment  of  a  little  land  and  some  donations  to  several 
thousands  of  soldiers.  Its  success  depended  on  its 
armies  and  on  the  terror  these  inspired,  and  that 
these  foundations  were  weak  was  made  manifest  by 
the  circumstances  that  led  up  to  the  peace  of  Misenum. 
Moreover,  the  Caesarian  enthusiasm  of  the  legions 
was  cooling  with  the  lapse  of  time,  and  was  giving 
place  to  a  spirit  of  sullen  discontent  caused  by  general 
disillusionment,  by  irregularities  in  issuing  their  pay, 
by  the  fatigues  of  the  continual  campaigns,  by  the 
failure  after  many  years  to  carry  out  the  pledges  that 
had  been  given  to  them.  The  powers  of  the  triumvirs 
might  be  increased  but  the  power  of  the  tritmivirate 
was  on  the  wane.  The  time  had  come  to  make  con- 
cessions, to  placate  the  public  discontent,  the  moneyed 
interest,  the  conservative  forces  which  were  again 
gathering  strength.  Octavian  who,  notwithstand- 
ing the  excesses  of  his  earlier  years,  was  a  far-seeing, 
well-balanced,  and  prudent  person,  understood  the 
position,  and  this  was  the  chief  cause  of  the  extra- 
ordinary greatness  to  which  it  was  his  fortune  to 
rise. 

14.  The  Donations  of  Alexandria  and  the  Oriental 
Policy  of  Antony  (34  B.C.)-  While  Octavian  in  Italy 
was  trying  to  recover  touch  with  the  conservative 
elements  in  the  State  and  to  effect  a  reconciliation 
with  the  Latin  and  republican  tradition,  Antony  in  the 
East  was  becoming  more  and  more  entangled  in  a 
dynastic  and  Egyptian  policy.  As  was  natural  he 
wished  to  retrieve  the  miscarriage  of  his  Parthian 
expedition  which  had  done  him  so  much  harm  both  in 
Italy  and  in  the  East,  and  he  spent  the  whole  of  the 
year  35  in  making  plans  for  his  revenge,  while  Octavian 
was  engaged  in  an  expedition   into   Dalmatia  and 


The  Donations  of  Alexandria  53 

Illyricum.  But  although  in  this  year  he  had  enough  to 
occupy  him  in  repressing  a  revolt  which  the  exiled 
Sextus  Pompeius  had  raised  against  him,  and  though 
in  consequence  of  this,  none  of  his  projects  could  be 
carried  out,  the  influence  of  Cleopatra  over  him  was 
growing.  This  was  a  fact  of  no  small  importance. 
The  queen  was  a  clever  woman,  Antony  a  violent 
rather  than  a  strong  man.  On  the  other  hand  the 
more  obstinately  he  set  himself  to  secure  a  great 
triumph  in  the  East  the  greater  was  his  need  of  Egypt 
and  its  treasures.  Italy,  moreover,  seemed  at  that 
time  to  be  an  irrevocably  ruined  country.  It  is 
easy,  therefore,  to  understand  with  what  force  Cleo- 
patra insisted  on  Antony  laying  aside  more  and  more 
completely  the  dress  of  a  proconsul  and  a  Roman 
magistrate,  and  acting  more  and  more  as  the  husband 
of  Cleopatra  and  the  King  of  Egypt,  on  his  divorcing 
Octavia  and  definitely  deciding  to  found  at  Alexandria 
a  new  dynasty  which  would  continue  that  of  the 
Lagidae  and  would  reconstitute,  with  Egypt  as  its 
centre,  a  vast  empire  made  up  of  provinces  torn  from 
the  empire  of  Rome  and  territories  now  belonging  to 
independent  and  vassal  kings. 

Antony,  though  ever  more  feebly,  still  resisted  these 
suggestions,  for  he  understood  the  danger  of  such  a 
policy.  In  34  he  decided  to  conquer  Armenia  which 
would  be  the  first  step  towards  his  second  campaign 
against  Parthia,  and  would  avenge  the  treachery  of 
the  Armenian  king  in  36.  He  did  in  fact  invade  and 
conquer  this  kingdom,  and  secured  possession  of  its 
treasures;  but,  having  accomplished  this  enterprise, 
he  determined  to  give  Cleopatra  the  first  great  satis- 
faction of  her  ambitions.  Not  only  did  he  celebrate 
his  triumph  at  Alexandria  and  not  at  Rome,   but 


54   Vicissitudes  and  Fall  of  the  Triumvirate 

immediately  thereafter,  at  a  solemn  feast  held  in  the 
Gymnasiimi,  he  proclaimed  Cleopatra  Queen  of 
Kings.  Caesarion  was  proclaimed  the  legitimate  son 
of  Cleopatra  and  Julius  Caesar,  and  was  made  her 
colleague  in  the  government  of  Egypt  which  was 
to  be  restored  to  its  old  boundaries  and  increased  by 
the  addition  of  Cyprus  and  Celesiria.  Ptolemy,  his 
own  son  by  the  Queen ,  who  was  a  child  of  less  than  two 
years  of  age  was  made  king  of  Phoenicia,  Syria,  and 
Cilicia.  To  Ptolemy's  elder  brother  Alexander,  who 
was  now  six,  were  given  Armenia  and  Parthia,  which 
had  still  to  be  conquered,  and  finally  to  Alexander's 
twin  sister,  the  tiny  Cleopatra,  were  assigned  Lybia 
and  the  Cyrenaica  as  far  as  the  great  Syrtes. 

The  Roman  triumvir  was  thus  reconstituting  the 
empire  of  the  Ptolemies  at  the  expense  of  the  republic, 
and  was  trying  to  create  once  more  in  the  East  one  of 
these  great  monarchical  powers  against  which  Rome 
had  had  to  struggle  through  so  many  centuries  of  war. 
It  goes  without  saying  that  he  was  doing  this,  not  for 
the  beaux  yeux  of  Cleopatra  but  in  order  to  become 
the  head  of  this  empire  himself  and  to  found  an 
oriental  dynasty  like  the  generals  of  Alexander. 
Antony  however  did  not  yet  finally  and  openly  break 
with  Rome  and  the  Roman  government.  Not  only 
did  he,  the  consort  of  Cleopatra,  assume  no  authority 
over  the  territories  he  had  granted,  but,  immediately 
after  the  donation,  he  sent  a  report  of  the  transaction 
to  the  senate  and  asked  for  approval  of  his  own  action. 
It  is  not  difhcult  to  see  why  he  did  so.  In  order  to 
found  the  new  dynasty  he  needed  a  powerful  army 
and  this  army  could  be  recruited  only  in  Italy  and 
commanded  by  Italian  officers.  For  the  moment, 
therefore,  although  in  the  East  he  might  be  regarded 


The  Donations  of  Alexandria  55 

as  the  sovereign  of  Egypt,  in  Italy  he  must  still  remain 
the  Roman  triumvir. 

This  complicated  policy,  however,  involved  him  in 
too  many  contradictions,  all  of  which  were  full  of 
dangers.  Italy  was  displeased  and  Octavian  dis- 
quieted. Antony  had  not  only  deserted  his  sister 
Octavia  for  Cleopatra,  but  he  had  declared  Cassarion 
the  legitimate  son  of  Caesar,  which  might  be  construed 
to  mean  that  Octavian  had  usurped  the  name  and 
fortune  of  the  dictator.  Furthermore  Antony  had 
raised  the  number  of  his  legions  to  thirty  and  had 
ordered  new  levies  in  Italy.  Thus  before  long  he 
would  be  at  the  head  of  a  great  army ;  of  his  own  fleet 
and  that  of  Egypt  as  well,  master  of  the  treasures  of 
the  King  of  Egypt  and  of  the  Ptolemies,  and  if  he  suc- 
ceeded in  conquering  Parthia,  he  would  be  lord  of  an 
empire  many  times  more  powerful  than  the  poor 
provinces  of  the  West.  Octavian  had  only  one  means 
of  averting  the  danger  and  that  was  to  embarrass 
Antony's  menacing  oriental  policy  in  its  beginnings 
by  causing  a  conflict  between  him  and  the  senate  on 
the  subject  of  the  donations  of  Alexandria  which  were 
much  blamed  by  public  opinion.  At  the  meeting 
of  the  senate,  held  on  January  i,  33,  Octavian  himself 
as  princeps  senatus  made  a  speech  on  the  donations 
which  he  severely  criticized.  At  the  same  time  his 
friends  and  agents  in  Rome  and  Italy  commenced 
a  vigorous  campaign  against  Antony,  exaggerating 
his  misdeeds,  depicting  in  lurid  colours  his  orgies  at 
Alexandria,  representing  the  Roman  triumvir  as  the 
slave  of  Cleopatra,  and  revealing  the  prestimptuous 
projects  of  the  Queen  which  were  so  prejudicial  to 
Rome  and  to  Italy.  This  campaign  and  the  attitude 
of  Octavian  made  Antonv   so  anxious  that  in   the 


56   Vicissitudes  and  Fall  of  the  Triumvirate 

middle  of  33  he  resolved  to  suspend  the  new  expedition 
against  Parthia  for  which  he  had  made  great  prepara- 
tions, and  to  adjust  the  Italian  situation  once  and  for 
all  by  overthrowing  Octavian.  His  plan  was  skilful. 
The  triumvirate,  now  reduced  to  a  duumvirate,  ex- 
pired at  the  end  of  33.  Antony  accordingly  intended 
to  propose  to  the  senate  that  he  should  lay  down  his 
office  and  restore  the  republic,  provided  that  Octavian 
would  do  the  same.  He  knew  that  Octavian,  who 
did  not  trust  him,  would  not  accept  this  proposal 
and,  by  himself  taking  the  initiative  towards  a  republi- 
can restoration  to  which  his  colleague  could  not  con- 
sent, he  would  counter  the  calimmies  of  Octavian 
and  his  friends,  would  have  the  air  of  being  the  real 
defender  of  the  republic  and  of  Italy,  and  would  have  an 
excellent  pretext  for  declaring  war  on  Octavian. 

Antony  and  Octavian,  in  short,  were  publicly  con- 
tending for  the  office  of  defender  of  the  republic! 
On  December  31 ,  33  B.C.,  the  triumviral  powers  of  both 
actually  lapsed.  Antony  who  was  not  in  Rome,  re- 
tained, according  to  the  constitution,  the  command  of 
his  army  as  pro-magistrate  until  his  successor  should 
be  appointed.  Octavian,  in  order  that  he  too  might 
legally  retain  the  command  of  his  armies  with  the 
title  of  magistrate,  had  to  leave  the  capital.  He  had 
hardly  done  so,  however,  when,  on  January  i,  32,  the 
consul  C.  Sosius,  who  was  a  fervent  partisan  of  An- 
tony, as  was  also  his  colleague  Domitius  Ahenobarbus, 
profited  by  Octavian's  absence  to  put  Antony's  plan 
in  operation.  He  brought  Antony's  proposal  before 
the  senate  and  concluded  his  speech  by  making 
another  proposal,  which  the  ancient  historians  say 
was  openly  directed  against  Octavian,  and  which  was 
probably  a  simimons  to  him  to  lay  down  immediately 


The  Donations  of  Alexandria  57 

the  command  of  the  armies  which  he  continued  to 
hold  as  pro-magistrate.  A  tribune  friendly  to  Octavi- 
an  interposed  his  veto,  and  several  days  of  disputes, 
vacillation,  and'  uncertainty  followed.  Finally  Oc- 
tavian,  seeing  that  his  inaction  was  encouraging  his 
enemies,  returned  to  Rome  at  the  head  of  a  body  of 
soldiers  and  armed  supporters,  entered  the  senate, 
made  a  vehement  speech  against  Antony  and  against 
the  intrigues  of  the  consuls,  and  concluded  by  pro- 
mising on  an  early  day,  to  establish  by  documentary 
proofs  the  charges  he  had  made  against  Antony. 

The  sensation  caused  in  the  political  world  by  this 
unexpected  act  was  immense.  Was  this  to  be  a  new 
beginning  of  violence  and  coups  d'etat,  the  forerunners 
of  civil  war?  Many  were  terrified,  the  consuls  and 
numerous  senators  thought  it  better  to  leave  Rome, 
and  even  Italy,  and  to  fly  to  Antony  who,  in  spite  of 
the  donations  of  Alexandria,  was  still  the  most  power- 
ful and  the  most  admired  of  the  triumvirs,  and  the 
one  in  whom  the  senate  and  Italy  had  most  confidence. 
Antony  in  the  meantime  had  arrived  at  Ephesus  and 
had  there  collected  from  all  parts  of  the  East  ships 
laden  with  grain,  cloth,  iron,  timber,  and  with  an 
extraordinary  diversity  of  contingents  sent  by  the 
kings,  rulers,  and  tetrarchs  of  Asia  to  mingle  with  the 
soldiers  of  Antony's  nineteen  legions.  The  Egyptian 
fleet  was  also  there  under  the  command  of  the  Queen 
herself  who  had  brought  with  her  much  treasure  and  a 
great  retinue.  It  is  easy  to  imagine  why  Cleopatra 
had  come.  She  did  not  wish  Antony  to  become  so 
deeply  involved  in  this  new  civil  war  that  he  would 
be  compelled  to  return  to  Italy  to  become  head  of 
the  republic  after  he  had  won.  She  wished  him  to  go 
back  to  Egypt,  and  to  be  the  sovereign  of  Egypt  at 


58   Vicissitudes  and  Fall  of  the  Triumvirate 

Alexandria,  the  prop  and  stay  of  the  new  dynasty. 
But  the  senators  who  came  from  Italy  wanted  Antony 
to  come  back  to  Italy  to  calm  the  timiult  there,  either 
as  the  conqueror  of  Octavian  or  after  having  come  to 
an  understanding  with  him.  This  at  once  led  to 
conflicts  between  Cleopatra  and  the  most  eminent  of 
Antony's  Roman  friends,  conflicts  which  caused 
Antony  to  hesitate.  On  the  one  hand  he  was  coming 
more  and  more  under  the  influence  of  Cleopatra,  and 
his  dependence  on  Egypt  grew  ever  greater.  On  the 
other  he  had  to  take  account  of  public  opinion  in 
Italy  and  of  the  aspirations  of  the  senators  who  had 
come  to  him,  for  he  needed  Italy  as  much  as  he  needed 
Egypt.  The  latter  supplied  him  with  money,  it  is 
true,  but  it  was  from  the  former  that  the  best  part  of 
his  army  came. 

The  first  great  struggle  between  the  Roman  senators 
and  Cleopatra  had  reference  to  Octavia.  Cleopatra 
wished  Antony  to  repudiate  Octavia  at  any  cost. 
The  senators  opposed  this,  but  Cleopatra  gained  her 
point  in  the  end.  In  the  month  of  May  in  the  year  32, 
Antony  reached  Athens  with  part  of  his  army  and  it 
was  from  Athens  that  Antony  sent  Octavia  his  letters 
of  divorce.  This  act  made  a  bad  impression  and 
helped  Octavian,  who  made  use  of  it  to  hold  up  his 
adversary  to  the  scorn  of  Italy  as  the  demented  victim 
of  the  love  philtres  of  Cleopatra.  He  did  not  hesitate 
to  compel  the  chief  of  the  Vestal  Virgins  to  hand  over  to 
him  Antony's  will  in  which  he  made  new  donations 
to  the  children  of  Cleopatra  and  directed  that  his 
body  should  be  sent  to  the  Queen  of  Egypt  and  buried 
at  Alexandria.  Octavian  published  this  document 
and,  in  short,  he  profited  by  the  impression  produced 
by  all  these    acts   of  Antony  to  provoke  what  was 


Actium  59 

called  the  coniuratio  Italia.  What  precisely  this  con- 
iuratio  was  we  do  not  know.  It  appears  that,  on 
the  pretext  that  the  senate  was  now  reduced  to  a  hand- 
ful of  members,  Octavian's  agents  persuaded  the 
magistrates  of  the  chief  towns  in  Italy  to  substitute 
themselves  for  the  senate,  to  put  Octavian  at  the 
head  of  the  army,  to  direct  him  make  war  on  Cleopatra, 
and  to  swear  fidelity  to  him.' 

15.  Actium  (31  B.C.).  The  expedient  adopted  by 
Octavian  in  order  to  secure  a  legal  justification  of 
his  command  was  a  trifle  forced.  But,  however  this 
may  be,  a  new  civil  war  had  begun.  Antony  and 
Octavian  were  face  to  face,  and  each  said  that  his 
object  was  the  defence  and  restoration  of  the  republic. 
Antony,  however,  was  so  much  the  stronger  both  in 
money,  munitions,  and  prestige  that  he  would  cer- 
tainly have  conquered  had  not  the  policy  of  Cleopatra 
interfered  with  his  plans.  Cleopatra  did  not  wish 
Antony  to  fight  Octavian  to  a  finish  because  the  Egyp- 
tian empire  which  she  dreamed  of  founding  with  An- 
tony would  have  fallen  to  pieces,  not  only  if  Antony 
were  to  be  conquered  but  even  if  he  were  to  be  vic- 
torious. In  the  latter  case,  Antony  would  have  been 
forced  to  return  to  Italy  to  resume  the  government  ot 
the  republic.  She  therefore  wished  Antony,  instead  of 
attacking  Octavian  in  order  to  reconquer  Italy,  to  re- 
turn to  Egypt,  to  abandon  Italy  to  Octavian,  and  to 
wait  until  Octavian  came  to  attack  him  in  the  East, 
if  indeed  he  had  the  courage  to  do  so.  Her  counsels 
were  not  in  vain,  and  Antony  did  not  in  fact  prepare 

'  Suet.,^Mg.,  17.  Mon.  Anc,  v., 3-4:  " /Mraw7  JM  mea  verba  tola 
Italia  sponle  sua  et  me  hello  quo  vici  ad  Actium  ducem  depoposcit." 
On  the  whole  question  of  the  coniuratio  cf.  G.  Ferrero,  The  Great- 
ness and  Decline  of  Rome,  vol.  iv.,  p.  84. 


6o   Vicissitudes  a7id  Fall  of  the  Triumvirate 

to  attack  Italy  with  the  mass  of  his  forces,  but  having 
left  no  less  than  eleven  legions  as  a  garrison  for  Egypt, 
he  scattered  a  whole  chain  of  naval  and  land  garrisons 
over  the  Mediterranean  from  the  Cyrenaica  to  Epirus 
in  the  autumn  of  32.  He  occupied  Cyrene,  Crete, 
Cape  Taenarus,  and  Methone.  He  disseminated  his 
army  over  the  whole  of  Greece,  fortified  Leucas, 
stationed  the  greater  part  of  his  fleet  in  the  Ambracian 
Gulf  and  its  advanced  posts  at  Corpo.  Having  thus 
disposed  his  forces  he  devoted  himself  during  the 
winter  to  intriguing  in  Italy,  in  order,  by  dint  of 
promises  and  bribes  to  induce  Octavian's  armies  to 
mutiny.  It  is  clear  that  his  object  was  to  undermine 
the  power  of  his  rival  without  committing  the  whole 
of  his  superior  forces  to  a  real  war.  Cleopatra's 
counsels  must  have  had  much  to  do  with  this  plan 
which  is  otherwise  inexplicable. 

The  scheme,  however,  was  so  artificial  that  it  sug- 
gested to  Octavian,  who  was  not  the  boldest  of  men, 
the  idea  of  surprising  and  destroying  Antony's  fleet 
in  the  Ambracian  Gulf  in  the  spring.  Early  in  31, 
thanks  to  a  skilful  stratagem  devised  by  Agrippa, 
Octavian  succeeded  in  landing  an  army  in  Epirus, 
but  he  failed  to  surprise  the  fleet,  because  Antony 
was  in  time  to  recall  his  army  from  Greece  and  to 
concentrate  it  for  the  defence  of  the  fleet  in  a  vast  camp 
on  the  promontory  of  Actium.  Octavian,  in  his  turn, 
was  compelled  to  encamp  and  to  anchor  his  fleet  at 
no  great  distance.  From  this  moment  began  a  long 
and  extremely  singular  war.  Octavian  did  not  at- 
tack Antony  because  he  did  not  dare.  Antony  did 
not  attack  Octavian  because  Cleopatra  would  not  let 
him.  Overtures  for  peace  were  made  but  did  not 
succeed.     It  was  said  that  the  two  opponents  would 


Actium  6 1 

make  neither  peace  nor  war.  The  two  armies,  how- 
ever, could  not  confront  each  other  for  ever.  The 
Roman  senators,  who  had  joined  Antony  insisted 
that  either  peace  should  be  made  or  that  the  war 
should  be  carried  to  a  conclusion.  Cleopatra 
wanted  to  go  back  to  Egypt  with  the  whole  army 
intact.  Discord  raged  round  Antony  more  furiously 
than  ever.  In  the  end,  towards  the  last  days  of 
August,  Antony  seemed  to  have  made  up  his  mind  to 
fight  a  great  naval  battle.  It  was  perhaps  doubtful 
whether  the  war  could  be  decided  at  sea  but  it  is 
certain  that  the  orders  given  for  the  battle  by  Antony 
were  of  the  most  extraordinary  and  equivocal  charac- 
ter. He  directed  that  22,000  soldiers  should  be  em- 
barked in  seventy  merchantmen,  that  Cleopatra's 
treasure  should  be  taken  on  board  sixty  Egyptian  ves- 
sels, that  the  heavy  and  clumsy  sailing  ships  intended 
only  for  long  voyages  should  be  loaded,  while  the 
lighter  vessels,  not  excepting  a  part  of  the  Egyptian 
fleet,  which  could  not  take  part  in  the  fight,  should  be 
burned.  Did  he  mean  to  fight  or  to  fly?  There  was 
such  grave  and  acute  doubt  on  this  point  that  several 
influential  senators,  Domitius  Ahenobarbus  among 
the  number,  went  over  to  Octavian  some  days  before 
the  battle. 

At  last,  at  dawn  on  September  2nd,  the  signal  for 
battle  was  given  and  the  fight  went  on  during  all  the 
earlier  part  of  the  day.  In  spite  of  all,  Antony's 
heavy  turreted  ships  seemed  to  be  prevailing  over  the 
faster  but  lighter  and  weaker  cruisers  of  Octavian, 
when  suddenly  the  great  mystery  of  so  many  months' 
standing  was  unveiled.  Immediately  the  north  wind, 
which  at  this  season  blows  down  the  ^gean  every 
day,  had  arisen,  the  two  startled  armadas  saw  Cleo- 


62    Vicissitudes  and  Fall  of  tiie  Triumvirate 

patra's  sixty  Egyptian  vessels  set  sail,  pass  audaciously 
between  the  two  opposing  fleets,  and  sail  off  in  safety 
towards  the  Peloponnese.  At  the  same  time  Antony 
leapt  into  a  quinquereme  and  followed  the  Queen. 
It  was  now  clear  that  the  battle  had  been  a  feint. 
Cleopatra  had  conquered.  Antony  was  renouncing 
the  struggle  for  the  restoration  of  the  republic  in 
Italy  and  was  retiring  to  his  Egyptian  empire  with  his 
Queen  and  her  treasures  and  with  part  of  his  army. 
P.  Canidius  a  trusted  lieutenant  had  been  assigned 
the  task  of  bringing  back  the  remainder  of  the  army 
and  of  the  fleet  to  Egypt.  ^ 

The  plan  was  ingenious,  but  a  difficulty,  which  no 
one  had  foreseen,  caused  it  to  fail  most  signally.  The 
impression  made  on  the  army  by  Antony's  flight  was 
so  bad  that  Canidius  did  not  dare  to  reveal  the  in- 
structions he  had  received  and  his  charge  to  take 
the  army  back  to  Egypt.  The  party  of  Cleopatra 
and  her  ministers  had  triumphed  in  the  tent  of  the 
general,  but  the  Roman  party  was  in  the  majority  in 
the  army  and  among  the  emigres  who  had  taken  refuge 
with  Antony.  Canidius  waited  some  days  without 
coming  to  any  decision  while  the  army  was  left  to 
itself  without  a  leader.  The  soldiers  fell  into  de- 
spondency and  desertions  began.  First  the  more 
prominent  Romans  of  Antony's  following,  next  the 
oriental  princes  and  the  allied  contingents,  and 
finally,  after  seven  long  days  of  waiting,  the  stout 
legions  of  the  land  army  and  the  fleet  went  over  to 
Octavian.  By  September  9th  Antony's  army  and 
his  fleet  had  ceased  to  exist. 

'  On  the  battle  of  Actium  and  the  reasons  why  its  history  has 
been  reconstructed  in  this  way  cf.  G.  Ferrero,  The  Greatness  and 
Decline  of  Rome,  vol.  iv.,  Appendix. 


Actium  63 

But,  in  spite  of  all,  the  soundness  of  the  defensive 
plan  of  Antony  and  Cleopatra,  had  it  been  decisively 
and  coherently  carried  out,  was  immediately  made 
manifest  after  that  date.  Notwithstanding  the  fact 
that  the  tritmivir  and  his  Queen  had  lost  nineteen 
legions  and  the  whole  of  their  powerful  armada,  that 
war  had  been  openly  declared  on  Cleopatra  and  that 
many  Greek  and  oriental  cities  had  now  declared 
for  the  victor,  Octavian  did  not  venture  to  pursue  his 
enemy  or  to  attack  him  in  his  distant  African  refuge. 
On  the  contrary,  as  if  he  regarded  the  war  as  over,  he 
disbanded  a  great  part  of  his  forces  and  directed 
Agrippa  to  bring  the  rest  back  to  Italy. 

This  time,  however,  Octavian's  prudence  was  des- 
tined to  be  overborne  by  the  pressure  of  Italian  public 
opinion.  Italy  could  not  endure  that  this  ruinous 
civil  war  should  remain  unfinished  with  every  prospect 
of  breaking  out  again  before  long  when  Antony,  as 
would  soon  have  been  the  case,  had  recovered  his 
strength.  As  little  could  she  allow  the  Eastern  pro- 
vinces, the  richest  districts  in  the  empire,  to  be  taken 
from  her  with  all  their  tribute  and  all  their  wealth. 
Neither,  again,  could  she  bring  herself  to  renounce 
Egypt,  her  bitter  enemy  now  apparently  at  her 
mercy.  For  all  these  reasons  Italy  demanded  that  Oct- 
avian should  conquer  the  kingdom  of  the  Ptolemies 
as  an  act  of  punishment  and  revenge,  and  with  such 
insistence  that  he  had  to  follow  the  course  dictated 
to  him  by  the  sentiment  of  the  whole  people.  A 
grave  and  significant  incident  which  occurred  in  the 
winter  of  31-30  must  doubtless  have  confirmed  him 
in  this  decision.  The  soldiers  who  had  been  dis- 
banded without  rewards  filled  Italy  with  disturbances 
and   threatened   serious  disorders   if  they  were  not 


64   Vicissitudes  and  Fall  of  the   Triumvirate 

given  the  same  pay  as  their  comrades.  It  was  clear 
that  only  the  conquest  of  a  rich  country  like  Egypt 
could  supply  the  means  whereby  all  these  grievances 
could  be  remedied ! 

Antony  had  prepared  after  a  fashion  for  the  defence 
of  Egypt.  With  eleven  legions  at  his  disposal,  an 
intact  fleet  with  plenty  of  treasure,  and  time  before 
him,  he  should  have  been  able  to  make  his  enemy  pay 
dear  for  his  audacity.  But  the  shock  of  Actium  had 
bereft  him  of  courage  and  authority,  and  had  deprived 
his  troops  of  confidence  in  their  general  whose  equivo- 
cal position  at  Alexandria  was  now  manifest.  Octa- 
vian,  therefore,  was  able  to  carry  out  successfully  his 
advance  on  Egypt  from  Syria  and  Africa,  and  to  march 
straight  on  Alexandria  almost  without  opposition. 
There,  under  the  walls  of  that  fatal  city,  took  place 
the  last  act  of  the  great  drama  which  developed  from 
the  death  of  Caesar.  On  the  i  st  of  August  in  the  year 
30  the  army  and  the  fleet  which  Antony  had  prepared 
for  his  defence  betrayed  him  and  deserted  to  Octavian. 

All  was  now  indeed  lost.  Antony  committed  suicide 
and  on  the  same  day  Octavian  entered  Alexandria, 
where  he  ordered  the  execution  (among  others)  of 
Caesarion,  the  illegitimate  son  of  Julius  Caesar,  and  of 
Canidius,  who  alone  knew  the  secret  of  Actium. 
Cleopatra  had  shut  herself  up  in  her  royal  tomb,  re- 
solved either  to  continue  her  reign  or  to  die.  But 
when  her  last  hope  was  gone  the  fragile  woman,  to 
whose  fears  a  lying  legend  has  ascribed  the  disaster 
of  Actium,  stoically  took  her  own  life  and  was  found 
on  her  couch  arrayed  in  the  most  sumptuous  of  her 
royal  robes  between  two  of  her  women,  one  of  whom 
was  dead  and  the  other  dying. 

Egypt  was  not  reduced  to  the  status  of  a  Roman 


A  ctium  65 

province.  On  his  entering  into  Alexandria  the  con- 
queror had  to  recognize  that  Antony's  oriental  policy 
was  not  merely  the  caprice  of  personal  ambition  but 
was  due,  in  part  at  least,  to  a  political  necessity.  The 
national  pride  and  the  dynastic  traditions  of  the  land 
of  the  Pharaohs  and  the  Ptolemies  would  not  easily 
have  brooked  that  their  country  should  share  the 
fate  of  Gaul  or  the  kingdom  of  Pergamus.  Octavian 
thought  it  best  to  feign,  as  Antony  had  done,  that  he 
was  himself  the  new  king  of  Egypt,  the  continuator 
of  the  extinct  dynasty  of  the  Ptolemies,  and  to  govern 
the  country  he  appointed,  not  a  proconsul  but  a 
prcBfectus,  who  was  his  own  personal  representative. 
The  first  holder  of  this  office  was  the  Latin  poet  Caius 
Cornelius  Gallus,  an  intimate  friend  of  Virgil  who 
dedicated  to  him  one  of  the  best  of  the  Eclogues. 
All  the  Egyptians  were  made  to  pay  a  tax  equivalent 
to  a  sixth  part  of  their  goods  and  further  contributions 
were  extorted  from  the  richest  among  them.  The 
immense  treasure  of  the  Ptolemies,  a  marvellous  col- 
lection of  finely  worked  objects  in  silver  and  gold  was 
all  brutally  melted  down  and  transformed  into  ready 
money.  From  this  treasure  were  at  last  paid  the 
officers  and  the  soldiers  who  had  fought  in  the  recent 
campaigns  and  were  still  unsatisfied'.  From  it  also 
Octavian  replaced  the  fortune  he  had  lost  and  the 
friends  of  his  evil  days  were  given  the  great  patrimonies 
which  were  to  be  a  source  of  so  much  splendour  and  so 
much  scandal  in  the  coming  days  of  the  empire. 

Octavian  spent  the  remainder  of  the  year  30  and 
the  early  part  of  the  following  year  in  the  East.  In 
the  spring  of  29  he  finally  returned'to  Italy,  and  on  the 
13th,  14th,  and  15th  of  August  his  triumphal  entry 
was  solemnly  celebrated  at  Rome. 


CHAPTER  III 


THE  AUGUSTAN   REPUBLIC 


i6.     The  Restoration  of  the  Republic   (27  B.C.). 

After  all  these  wars  and  catastrophes  Octavian,  the 
last  survivor  of  the  rivals  who  had  fought  for  supreme 
power,  remained  master  of  the  republic.  All  the 
legions  recognized  him  as  their  general ;  the  senate  was 
unanimous  in  its  admiration  for  him,  and  in  its  willing- 
ness to  place  the  State  in  his  hands;  Rome  and  Italy 
acclaimed  him  as  the  saviour  of  the  empire;  the  pro- 
vinces, now  subdued,  obeyed  him.  At  Rome  no  man 
had  ever  enjoyed  so  vast  and  so  secure  an  authority. 
What  use  did  he  make  of  it? 

The  prevailing  theory  of  all  schools  of  thought 
during  the  nineteenth  century  was  that  Augustus 
availed  himself  of  his  good  fortune  to  found  a  mon- 
archy at  Rome,  but  that  he  took  the  precaution  to 
hide  it  under  the  outward  forms  of  the  old  republic. 
This  theory  is,  however,  without  foundation,  either 
in  the  records  of  history  or  in  what  may  be  called  the 
logic  of  the  situation.  We  must  go  down  as  far  as 
Dio  Cassius,  an  oriental  writer  of  the  third  century 
of  the  empire,  before  we  find  an  ancient  historian  who 
speaks  of  Augustus  a^s  a  monarch.  Of  the  more  ancient 
authors  who  were  nearer  to  him  in  time  not  one  ap- 
pears to  suspect  that  Augustus  had  hidden  a  monarchy 

66 


The  Restoration  of  the  Republic         67 

under  old  republican  forms.  Nor  is  it  difficult  to 
show  that  Octavian  had  neither  the  power  nor  the 
resources  with  which  to  found  a  monarchy  like  those 
by  which  the  peoples  of  the  East  had  hitherto  been 
governed.  To  found  a  monarchy  meant  to  substitute 
the  authority  of  himself  and  his  family  for  that  of  the 
senate  and  the  republican  magistracies  and  therefore 
for  that  of  the  little  group  of  great  families  who  had 
founded  the  empire  and,  through  a  series  of  atrocious 
discords,  had  governed  it  up  to  that  time.  It  meant 
replacing  these  families  by  a  bureaucracy  chosen 
from  all  classes  and  from  all  parts  of  the  empire  which 
would  have  recognized  him  as  their  sole  chief  and  as 
the  only  source  of  authority.  Augustus  could  have 
carried  out  such  a  revolution  only  if  the  public  opinion 
of  Italy  had  consented  to  it,  for  his  power  rested  on  the 
fidelity  of  the  legions  and  the  great  majority  of  the 
legionaries  were  Italians.  Had  not  Antony's  disas- 
trous end  shown  how  dangerous  it  was  to  flout  the 
sentiments  and  ideas  which  were  rooted  most  ten- 
aciously among  the  middle  and  lower  classes  in  Italy? 
Now  one  of  the  strongest  sentiments  of  Romanized 
Italy  was  veneration  for  the  senate,  for  the  ancient 
institutions  of  the  republic  and  for  the  original  aris- 
tocracy of  Rome.  Fierce  as  the  struggles  of  Roman 
factions  had  been,  they  had  not  had  the  effect  of 
increasing  the  spread  of  democratic  ideas  to  any  great 
extent  among  the  masses.  The  leaders  of  the  popular 
party,  like  those  on  the  side  of  the  senate,  had  been 
noblemen  of  ancient  family,  and,  in  the  conflicts  which 
had  taken  place,  the  middle  and  lower  classes  had 
aimed  at  securing  material  benefits  rather  than  the 
right  to  rise  to  the  highest  offices  in  the  State.  More- 
over, it  did  not  occur  to  the  populace  or  to  those  of 


68  The  Augustan  Republic 

middle  rank  in  Italy  that  the  armies  should  be  com- 
manded by  any  one  not  a  meml^er  of  the  old  aristo- 
cratic families  holding  senatorial  rank.  So  much  was 
this  the  case  that  all  those  persons  of  obscure  origin 
who  had  succeeded  in  insinuating  themselves  into  the 
senate  during  the  disorders  of  the  civil  wars  were 
exceedingly  unpopular  unless  they  possessed  the  out- 
standing personal  merits  of  such  men  as  Agrippa.  In 
the  very  year  (28  B.C.)  in  which  Augustus  is  credited 
by  modern  historians  with  the  intention  of  founding  a 
monai-chy  he  was  obliged,  in  order  to  satisfy  public 
opinion,  to  revise  the  list  of  the  senate  and  to  invite 
the  resignations  of  no  less  than  two  hundred  of  its 
less  distinguished  members — precisely  the  people  who 
would  have  been  the  most  docile  instruments  of  a 
monarchical  regime.  But  if  the  Italian  middle  and 
lower  classes  would  not  be  governed  by  persons  drawn 
from  their  own  ranks,  can  it  be  supposed  that  they 
would  have  accepted  the  rule  of  functionaries,  some 
of  whom  would  have  been  provincials  and  some  even 
orientals?  It  is  not  likely!  Indeed,  more  than  four 
centuries  were  to  pass  before  Italy  could  bring  herself 
to  submit  to  such  an  innovation  as  that. 

The  truth  is  that  in  these  very  years  all  Italy  was 
agitated  by  a  sort  of  traditionalist  fervour  of  which  her 
literature  had  preserved  manifest  traces.  The  im- 
mense confusion  of  the  civil  wars  had  brought  men  to 
their  senses  and  had  driven  their  terrified  spirits 
back  upon  the  past.  It  was  at  this  time  that  Livy, 
destined  to  become  Octavian's  intimate  friend,  began 
to  write  his  history  of  Rome,  the  object  of  which  was 
to  glorify  on  the  one  hand  the  ancient  republican 
government  and  the  men  who,  like  Pompey,  had 
perished  in  the  struggle  against  the  democrats  and  on 


The  Restoration  of  the  Republic         69 

the  other  hand  to  depreciate  the  leaders  of  the  popular 
party,  not  excepting  even  Cansar. '  At  this  time  also, 
the  more  ancient  writers,  such  as  Livius  Andronicus, 
Pacuvius,  Ennius,  Plautus,  and  Terence  were  preferred 
to  the  most  illustrious  authors  of  more  recent  date. 
Epicureanism,  so  much  in  favour  with  the  preceding 
generation,  was  losing  ground,  ousted  by  the  doc- 
trines of  the  Pythagoreans  and  the  Stoics.  Virgil  was 
beginning  to  trace  the  outline  of  the  poem  which  was 
to  be  the  supreme  moral  and  religious  expression  of 
the  Roman  spirit.  And  there  had  already  been  formed 
a  party  which  was  growing  ever  more  numerous  and 
more  threatening,  whose  aim  was  to  root  out  from 
Rome  by  means  of  savage  penal  laws  what  they 
described  as  "corruption,"  as  well  as  the  vices  im- 
ported by  conquest,  orientalism,  excessive  riches,  the 
immorality  of  women,  and  the  complacency  of  their 
husbands,  luxury  and  the  love  of  pleasure. 

In  such  circumstances  not  even  a  new  Caesar  could  ♦ 
have  succeeded  in  setting  up  an  absolute  monarchy. 
It  cannot  be  supposed  that  any  such  idea  was  ever 
entertained  by  a  man  like  Octavian  who  was  no  great 
and  ambitious  general  jDut   a  patient  and  methodical 
worker,    an   upright   and  pnident  administrator,  an 
adroit  and  sagacious  politician,   who  moreover  had 
just  married  Livia,  the  divorced  wife  of  the  fugitive 
Tiberius  Claudius  Nero,  a  lady  of  high  character  and 
great    ability  and   an  incarnation  of  the   spirit  and , 
traditions  of  the  old  Roman  nobility  which  a  monarchy  ^ 
must  needs  have  destroyed. 

Octavian's  political  plan  was  therefore  something 
much  simpler  and  more  modest  than  that  attributed 
to  him  by  the  historians.     It  was  io  reconstruct,  as 

'  Cf.  Sen., Qu.  Nal.,  v.,  i8,  4. 


70  The  Augustan  Republic 

far  as  he  could  and  as  well  as  he  could,  all  that  could 
still  be  preserved  of  the  old  aristocratic  republic,  to 
restore  to  the  ancient  Roman  institutions  the  authority 
of  which  the  triumvirate  had  despoiled  them,  seeking 
at  the  same  time  to  correct  the  defects  generated  first 
by  anarchy  and  then  by  the  civil  wars,  the  dictatorship 
of  Cassar  and  the  triumvirate/  Among  these  defects 
two  were  especially  serious.  One  was  the  division  of 
military  commands  owing  to  which  generals  had 
often  used  their  armies  to  forward  their  individual 
ambitions  and  had  even  made  war  on  the  senate 
to  whose  authority  they  were  theoretically  subject. 
The  other  was  the  system  of  electing  to  each  office  two 
annual  magistrates  with  identical  powers.  This  had 
on  the  one  hand  secured  republican  liberty  but,  on 
the  other,  had  interfered  with  continuity  of  govern- 
ment or,  worse  still,  had  placed  a  potent  instrument 
of  disorder  in  the  hands  of  the  factions  which,  when- 
ever they  carried  the  election  to  an  office,  made  use 
of  the  magistrate  who  was  their  successful  candidate 
to  obstruct  all  that  was  done  by  his  colleague  elected 
by  their  adversaries.  While,  therefore,  it  was  neces- 
sary to  restore  the  republic,  to  summon  the  comitia 
again,  and  to  revive  the  old  powers  of  the  offices  of 
State  an  authority  had  at  the  same  time  to  be  set  up 
which   would   be   sufficiently   strong   to   control   the 

•  The  outline  of  this  reconstruction  of  the  political  work  of 
Augustus  which  entirely  contradicts  the  incoherent  doctrine  of 
the  "diarchy"  maintained  by  Mommsen,  has  been  filled  in  at 
great  length  by  G.  Ferrero,  The  Greatness  and  Decline  of  Rome, 
vols.  Jv.  and  v.  The  capital  idea  of  this  reconstruction  had  already 
been  adumbrated  by  E.  Meyer  in  a  short  study  entitled  Kaiser 
Augustus  published  in  Kleine  Schriften,  Halle,  1910,  pp.  441  flf., 
and  by  Fustel  de  Coulange,  La  Caule  romaine,  Paris,  1901,  pp. 
147  ff. 


The  Restoration  of  the  Republic  71 

factions,  the  magistrates,  the  generals,  and  the  pro- 
consuls alike,  while  leaving  to  the  officers  of  the  State 
the  free  exercise  of  their  proper  powers  civil  and 
military.  Cicero,  developing  an  idea  borrowed  from 
Polybius  and  Aristotle,  had  already  demonstrated  in 
his  de  Republica  that  in  States  which  are  distracted  by 
civil  discord  it  is  necessary  to  appoint  a  single  supreme 
magistrate,  subject  to  the  common  law,  and  therefore 
republican,  but  invested  with  a  longer  term  of  power 
and  with  an  authority  of  wider  scope  than  that  of 
ordinary  magistrates,  who  in  virtue  of  his  personal 
and  legal  position  would  be  able  to  prevent  each 
institution  or  magistracy  from  invading  the  sphere 
reserved  for  the  others  and  from  neglecting  its  own 
proper  business. 

This  is  the  cardinal  idea — purely  Latin  and  re- 
publican— which  inspired  the  constitutional  reform 
discussed  by  Octavian  and  the  most  eminent  members 
of  the  senate  during  the  year  28  B.C.  and  solemnly 
sanctioned  on  January  23,  27.  Under  the  new 
reform,  Octavian,  by  asstuning  proconsular  power  in 
all  provinces  in  which  there  were  armies,  agreed  to 
take  command  of  all  the  armies  so  as  to  secure  that 
all  the  soldiers  and  their  officers  were  persons  in  whom 
he  had  confidence  and  were  directly  dependent  on  and 
responsible  to  him,  instead  of  to  the  anonymous, 
intermittent,  and  feeble  authority  of  the  senate,  as  in 
past  times.  The  provinces  in  which  Octavian  became 
proconsul  in  27  were  only  three,  viz.  Syria  with  Cyprus, 
Gallia  Transalpina,  and  Spain.  The  others  were  to 
be  governed  as  before  by  proconsuls  and  propraetors. 
On  the  other  hand,  as  it  was  necessary  to  have  another 
authority  in  Rome  itself  to  supervise  the  urban 
magistrates   and,   when  necessary,   to   convoke   and 


'J2  The  Augustan  Republic 

stimulate  the  senate,  Octavian  also  consented  to 
undertake  this  duty  himself  by  becoming  every  year 
a  candidate  for  the  consulship.  He  was  therefore  to 
be  at  the  same  time  consul  and  proconsul ;  through  his 
lieutenants  he  was  to  govern  from  Rome  the  provinces 
assigned  to  him,  and,  if  he  had  to  go  to  the  provinces, 
he  was  to  continue  to  govern  Rome  in  his  capacity  of 
consul.  The  combination  of  the  two  offices  of  consul 
and  proconsul  was  undoubtedly  rather  a  revolution 
than  a  reform  in  the  old  constitution,  but  it  was  not 
entirely  a  new  thing,  for,  in  51,  Pompey  had  held 
both.  Octavian,  moreover,  was  receiving  these  offices 
from  the  constituent  authorities  of  the  republic,  and 
solely  with  the  object  of  facilitating  the  working  of  the 
restored  republican  institutions,  and,  in  short,  he  was 
placing  himself  at  the  head  of  the  State  as  first  magis- 
trate or  president  (princeps)  with  legal  and  limited 
powers  granted  to  him  for  ten  years  precisely  as  Cicero 
had  advised  in  the  de  Officiis.  At  the  same  time  he 
laid  down  all  the  powers  with  which,  as  triumvir,  he 
had  \Seen  invested  by  the  lex  Titia.  Thus  even  this 
accumulation  of  exceptional  powers  on  the  person  of 
the  new  president  appeared  to  his  contemporaries, 
who  could  not  foresee  the  future,  merely  as  a  pro- 
visional system  of  government  which  was  to  last  until 
the  day  on  which  the  much  damaged  machine  of  the 
republic  was  once  more  in  working  order. 

The  conqueror  could  not  have  been  more  modest, 
and  on  January  i6th  he  was  richly  rewarded.  As  if 
to  imprint  a  sacred  character  on  the  new  office  created 
a  few  days  before,  the  senate  and  people  conferred  on 
Octavian  as  a  special  honour  the  title  of  Augustus 
under  which  he  has  passed  into  history. 

17.     The  Reorganization  of  the  Finances.     From 


The  Reorganization  oj  the  Finances      jT) 

this  moment  begins  the  new  political  history  of  Oc- 
tavian  and  the  Roman  republic,  a  history  apparently 
modest  and  inconsiderable  but,  in  substance  and  effect, 
of  immense  importance.  One  single  idea  dominates 
his  whole  policy — to  satisfy  as  far  as  possible  the  new 
current  of  traditionalist  opinion  which  wished  to  re- 
establish order  in  the  State,  in  the  family,  in  thought, 
and  in  manners,  and  to  recreate  the  patriotism,  the 
concord,  the  devotion,  the  simplicity  of  life,  and  the 
discipline  of  the  most  glorious  days  of  the  aristocracy. 
Caesar's  son,  in  a  word,  was  seeking  to  establish  a 
policy  which  was  the  antithesis  of  Csesar's.  The  first 
measures  of  this  policy  which  Augustus  was  to  pursue 
uninterruptedly  for  more  than  forty  years,  were 
carried  out  in  28  while  he  was  preparing  the  new  re- 
publican constitution.  In  that  year  he  had  already 
reduced  the  army  to  twenty-three  legions;  he  had  set 
his  hand  to  the  re-establishment  of  discipline,  begin- 
ning by  excluding  foreigners,  freedmen,  and  provincials 
from  the  legions  so  that  military  "service  should  re- 
main, or  rather  again  become,  the  privilege  of  the 
Italian  citizen,  and  by  restoring  the  strict  system  of 
rewards  and  punishments  of  former  days.  In  the 
same  year  he  had  begun  to  reconstruct  by  means  of 
donations  the  fortunes  of  many  senatorial  famihes 
fallen  on  evil  days,  with  a  view  to  restoring  to  them 
part  of  the  influence  they  had  lost,  and  to  putting 
them  in  a  position  to  help  him  in  the  government  of 
the  republic.  Immediately  after  the  republican  re- 
storation Augustus  passed  a  law  lowering  the  legal  age 
qualifying  for  office  and  thus  permitting  young  men 
to  commence  their  political  career  early  in  life.  The 
number  of  aristocratic  families  was  so  much  diminished 
that  it  was  impossible  to  fill  all  the  important  offices 


74  The  Augustan  Republic 

from  the  nobility  without  having  recourse  to  the 
younger  men.  On  the  other  hand  it  was  a  good  thing 
to  secure  that  youths  should  be  occupied  with  public 
work  at  an  age  when  they  were  most  exposed  to  the 
temptations  of  idleness;  this  had,  indeed,  been  the 
policy  of  the  aristocracy  itself  in  the  second  century 
B.C.  when  it  was  at  the  very  zenith  of  its  career.'  He 
next  passed  a  law  the  idea  of  which  had  already  been 
conceived  by  Caesar,  which  fixed  salaries  for  governors 
of  provinces  and  for  all  newly  appointed  magistrates. 
This  was  a  necessary  reform  since  a  part  of  the  aris- 
tocracy was  too  poor  to  support  the  expenses  of 
public  office,  although  it  contravened  the  fundamen- 
tal principle  of  the  old  republic  that  public  service 
should  be  gratuitous.  Finally  and  above  all,  he  gave 
his  mind  to  the  reorganization  of  the  finances. 

Dilapidation,  disorder,  robbery,  and  malversation 
had  been  so  rife  that  financial  reform  had  become  the 
problem  of  problems  for  the  republic.  Without  solv- 
ing it  Augustus  could  not  have  carried  on  a  war,  or 
reorganized  the  public  service  or  undertaken  any 
public  works.  He  therefore  concentrated  his  forces 
on  the  financial  question.  And  first  of  all  he  had  to 
discover  what  precisely  were  the  income  and  the  ex- 
penditure of  the  republic.  For  this  purpose  he  or- 
ganized in  his  own  service  and  for  his  own  use  a  regular 
system  of  State  accountants,  choosing  for  the  work 
the  best  educated  and  the  most  intelligent  of  his 
numerous   slaves   and   freedmen.      As   head   of   the 

'  On  this  important  point — important  because  it  implies  the 
republican  character  of  the  rapid  careers  of  Drusus,  Tiberius,  and 
other  members  of  the  family  of  Augustus — cf.  the  more  detailed 
explanations  and  proofs  given  in  G.  Ferrero,  The  Greatness  and 
Decline  of  Rome,  vol.  iv.,  p.  174. 


The  Reorganization  of  the  Finayices      75 

senate,  as  consul  and  proconsul  of  three  great  pro- 
vinces, he  had  at  hand  all  the  necessary  data,  and  was 
in  a  position  to  draw  up  a  precise  and  complete  balance 
sheet  of  the  Roman  State.'  This  balance  sheet  was 
even  more  exact  and  detailed  than  those  prepared  by 
the  magistrates,  and  Augustus,  without  in  any  way 
infringing  the  principle  of  the  autonomy  of  the  existing 
financial  organs  of  the  State — the  senate,  and  the 
prcefecti  cBrarii  Saturni — made  a  remarkably  effective 
use  of  it  in  preparing  bills  for  the  reorganization  of  the 
finances,  for  censuring  or  recalling,  or  inducing  the 
senate  to  censure  or  recall,  magistrates  who  were 
guilty  of  useless  expenditure  or  neglect  in  their 
provinces,  and  finally  for  exploiting  the  property  of 
the  State. 

But  knowledge  was  not  enough.  It  was  necessary 
to  make  provision  for  giving  new  life  to  the  treasury, 
and  with  this  end  in  view,  he  resumed  in  these  years 
a  plan  of  Caesar's  to  take  an  inventory  of  the  vast 
patrimony  which  the  republic  possessed  throughout 
the  empire  and  from  which  it  had  always  derived 
great  advantages,  either  directly,  or  by  farming  out 
contracts  to  the  companies  of  publicani,  though  hither- 
to under  a  system  which  led  to  great  waste  and  dis- 
order. Augustus  also  took  steps  to  increase  the  tribute 
from  several  of  the  provinces,  especially  those  which 
in  recent  years  had  been  less  devastated  than  the 
others,  and  which  by  comparison  with  their  condition 
fifty  years  before,  showed  the  most  manifest  signs  of 
progress.  Such  were  Gallia  Transalpina,  and  perhaps 
also  the  Illyrian  provinces  and  some  Alpine  districts. 
He  also  did  his  best  to  put  into  circulation  a  greater 
quantity  of  coin  to  meet  both  public  and  private 

■  Suet.,  Aug.,  loi. 


76  The  Augusta?!  Republic 

needs.  Durinj:^  the  triumvirate  a  vast  amount  of 
gold  and  silver  had  been  withdrawn  from  circulation  in 
Italy  as  well  as  throughout  the  empire,  owing  to  the 
terror  inspired  by  the  prevalent  anarchy,  and  this  had 
compelled  the  triumvirs  to  depreciate  the  coinage. 
To  remedy  the  scarcity  of  circulating  medium  Augus- 
tus formed  the  plan  of  conquering  some  gold- producing 
territory,  and,  with  this  object  he  prepared  the  first 
war  of  his  principate — that  against  the  Cantabrians 
and  the  Asturians  in  the  Iberian  peninsula  where  the 
gold  mines,  after  a  revolt  of  the  natives,  had  been 
abandoned  during  the  anarchy  of  the  preceding  cen- 
tury. At  the  same  time  and  for  the  same  reasons  he 
decided  on  the  conquest  of  the  valley  of  the  Salassi 
(Val  d'Aosta)  which  was  equally  valuable. 

The  reorganization  of  the  finances,  indeed,  was  a 
matter  so  near  to  his  heart  that  in  this  very  year  (27) 
he  determined  to  undertake  a  long  tour  of  inspection, 
and  in  the  first  place  to  go  to  Gaul  to  establish  the 
new  tributes  and  then  to  proceed  to  Spain  to  conquer 
in  person  the  Cantabrian  and  Asturian  gold  mines. 
Before  this  he  had  decided  to  undertake  at  his  own 
charges,  with  the  help  of  such  of  the  richest  of  the 
senators  as  were  willing  to  contribute,  great  public 
works  in  Italy,  such  as  the  repair  of  several  roads,  of 
many  temples  and  public  monuments  as  well  as  the 
complete  reconstruction  of  other  buildings.  Having 
rapidly  completed  these  arrangements  in  the  last 
months  of  27  he  set  out  for  Gaul  and  Spain. 

18.  The  First  Difficulties  of  the  New  Regime  and 
the  Crisis  of  the  Year  23  B.C.  The  first  stage  of 
Augustus's  journey  ended  at  Narbona  (Narbonne) 
where  he  had  summoned  all  the  notables  of  Trans- 
alpine Gaul  to  meet  him,  probably  in  order  to  announce 


The  First  Difficulties  of  the  New  Regime  77 

to  them  a  series  of  measures  intended  to  prepare  the 
way  for  a  reform  of  the  system  of  tribute  in  this 
province.  Among  these  measures  there  was  one 
providing  for  a  general  census  designed  to  ascertain 
the  changes  of  fortune  which  had  taken  place  in  Gaul 
during  the  period  of  nearly  thirty  years  which  had 
elapsed  since  the  annexation.  It  was  not  by  chance 
that  Augustus  had  looked  to  the  province  conquered 
by  Caesar  for  an  increase  of  tribute.  During  the  last 
civil  war,  while  Italy  and  the  oriental  provinces  had 
been  impoverished  by  depredations  and  exactions,  Gaul 
had  been  growing  rich.  After  the  death  of  Cassar  the 
authority  of  Rome  had  been  too  weak  to  enable  her  to 
exploit  the  country  very  drastically.  All  she  had  been 
able  to  do  was  to  impose  a  certain  degree  of  peace  and 
order  by  which  Gaul  had  profited.  No  longer  dev- 
astated by  recurrent  civil  war,  paying  little  or  perhaps 
no  tribute  to  the  dominating  power,  freed  from  the 
turbulent  nobles  and  the  bands  of  robber  knights  and 
their  dependents,  who  had  been  such  a  curse  in  the 
days  of  her  independence,  Gaul  in  the  course  of  a 
single  generation  had  been  completely  transformed. 
Many  Gauls  had  become  skilled  labourers,  others  had 
taken  to  farming ;  others  again  had  enrolled  themselves 
as  soldiers  in  the  armies  of  the  triumvirs,  and  had 
taken  part  in  the  plunder  of  the  empire,  bringing  back 
to  their  own  country  the  gold  they  had  seized  all  over 
the  world.  In  a  country  like  Gaul,  then  as  now,  very 
fertile,  covered  with  forests  and  rich  in  minerals,  the 
effects  of  the  new  regime  were  everywhere  apparent 
after  thirty  years.  Mines  were  everywhere  beginning 
to  be  sunk,  gold  was  being  looked  for  under  ground  as 
well  as  in  the  sands  of  the  rivers,  veins  of  silver  were 
being  discovered.     New  land  was  coming  into  culti- 


78  The  Augustan  Republic 

vation  and  for  the  first  time  flax,  hitherto  cultivated 
only  in  the  East,  was  being  planted.  In  addition  to 
this,  the  Gauls  were  making  a  prosperous  beginning 
in  industxy — in  the  departments  of  textiles,  pottery, 
and  glass.  They  were  endeavouring  to  imitate  the 
products  of  the  great  industrial  centres  of  the  East 
and  were  making  copies  which  were  rougher,  but  also 
cheaper,  than  the  originals.  Rome,  therefore,  had  a 
right  to  demand  a  higher  tribute  from  Gaul  than  she 
had  hitherto  received. ' 

Augustus  waited  in  Gaul  until  he  had  made  the 
necessary  preliminary  arrangements  for  this  augmen- 
tation of  tribute  and  then  went  on  to  Spain  to  conduct 
the  war  against  the  Cantabri  and  the  Astures  while 
one  of  his  lieutenants  was  conquering  the  valley  of  the 
Salassi.  In  the  second  half  of  the  year  25  he  was  again 
in  Rome.  Two  years  had  now  passed  since  the  solemn 
restoration  of  the  republic,  and  the  defects  of  that 
settlement  were  already  manifest.  In  25  there  had 
not  been  a  sufficient  number  of  candidates  to  fill  the 
twenty  qusestorships.  The  public  services  in  Rome 
and  elsewhere  continued  to  be  carried  on  as  badly  as 
ever;  the  senate  itself  preferred  to  leave  all  decisions 
to  Augustus,  reserving  only  the  right  to  ratify  and 
approve  what  was  done.  All  were  ready  to  extol  the 
aristocratic  republic  of  the  good  old  days,  but  few 
were  prepared  to  make  the  sacrifices  which  were 
necessary  to  revive  it.  The  historic  families  of  the 
aristocracy  who  had  the  necessary  prestige  were  no 
longer  either  numerous  or  rich  enough  or  sufficiently 
public-spirited  to  undertake  the  whole  administration 
of  so  vast  an  empire.     In  the  equestrian  order  and 

'  On  these  tributes  and  the  texts  which  relate  to  them  cf.  G. 
Ferrero,  The  Greatness  and  Decline  of  Rome,  vol.  iv.,  p.  214, 


Tlie  First  Difficulties  of  the  New  Regime    79 

among  the  people  there  were  indeed  men  who  were 
sufficiently  rich  to  serve  the  public  disinterestedly  and 
who  had  sufficient  ambition  to  desire  office,  but  these 
lacked  the  necessary  training  and  the  prestige  of  a 
great  name.  The  people  would  not  have  obeyed  or 
tolerated  them,  nor  was  the  ancient  nobility,  whose 
pride  had  grown  up  again,  disposed  to  admit  too  many 
new  men  into  its  ranks.  Thus,  between  those  who 
could  have  governed  and  would  not  and  those  who 
would  have  governed  but  could  not,  the  administra- 
tion of  the  republic  had  to  get  on  as  best  it  could,  and 
Augustus  was  left  to  deal  with  all  the  difficulties. 
He  had  to  think  of  everything  and  foresee  everything, 
and  the  burden  placed  on  his  shoulders  was  so  great 
that  towards  the  month  of  June  in  the  year  24  he  fell 
seriously  ill.  He  grew  better,  but  in  the  following 
spring  he  had  a  relapse  which  was  worse  than  the 
original  attack.  One  evil  day  Rome  learned  that 
Augustus  was  dying  and  that  he  had  already  handed 
over  to  Agrippa  and  to  C.  Calpurnius  Piso,  his  col- 
league in  the  consulship,  his  testamentary  dispositions. 
It  was  a  terrible  moment  for  the  whole  capital,  for 
who  could  sa}^  what  might  not  be  the  political  conse- 
quences of  his  death? 

Augustus  fortunately  recovered,  but  when  he  be- 
came convalescent  he  declared  that  he  must  have 
absolute  rest  and  expressed  a  wish  to  retire  into  private 
life.  The  consternation  at  Rome  was  indescribable. 
Every  one  believed  that  if  Augustus  went  the  civil 
wars  would  begin  again.  He  was  begged  and  prayed 
to  remain  at  the  head  of  the  government.  In  the  end 
he  gave  way  when  the  senate — as  perhaps  he  intended 
them  to  do — consented  to  a  new  constitutional  reform 
which,  while  it  left  him  immense  personal  power,  had 


8o  The  Augustan  Republic 

the  effect  of  lightening  the  burden  of  his  public  duties. 
The  princeps  was  to  give  up  his  annual  consulship, 
thus  abandoning  the  tedious  and  difficult  business 
connected  with  Rome  and  Italy,  and  was  to  devote 
himself  entirely  to  the  provinces.  In  these  he  was  to 
receive  a  supreme  power  of  supervision  and  control. 
But,  though  the  upper  classes  might  be  willing  to  be 
deprived  of  a  powerful  and  benevolent  consul  like 
Augustus,  the  middle  and  lower  classes  were  much 
less  ready  to  consent  to  his  giving  up  all  share  in 
directing  the  affairs  of  Italy.  This  no  doubt  was  the 
reason  why  Augustus,  though  he  was  no  longer  to  be 
consul,  was  willing  to  accept  a  new  power  or  rather 
an  abstract  power — the  trihunicia  potestas — for  life. 
This  gave  him  all  the  ancient  tribunician  rights,  the 
right  of  veto,  the  right  of  making  proposals  in  the 
senate,  the  right  of  proposing  laws  to  the  people.  It 
was  a  general  power,  unrestricted  and  at  the  same 
time  indefinite,  but  it  gave  him  power  to  intervene 
in  the  affairs  of  Italy,  or  rather  to  threaten  interven- 
tion when  required.* 

This  reform  was  passed  about  the  middle  of  the 
year,  and  with  it  began  the  confusion  of  the  concep- 
tion of  the  restoration  of  27  which  had  originally 
been  so  clear.  Shortly  after  this,  however,  in  the 
same  year  two  events  happened  which  demonstrated 
more  completely  than  ever  that  the  aristocratic 
republic,  in  spite  of  the  efforts  of  Augustus  and  others 
to  galvanize  it  into  life,  was  in  fact  in  ariiculo  mortis. 
The  first  of  these  events  was  the  arrival  at  Rome  of  a 
Parthian  mission.  For  about  ten  years  the  Parthians 
had  had  no  dealings  of  any  kind  with  the  Romans. 

'  On  the  true  character  of  this  constitutional  reform  cf.  G. 
Ferrero,  The  Greatness  and  Decline  of  Rome,  vol.  iv.,  pp.  242-243. 


The  First  Difficulties  of  tJie  New  Regime    8i 

It  had  happened,  however,  in  the  course  of  a  dynastic 
war  within  the  Parthian  empire,  that  the  eldest  son 
of  Phraates  had  been  taken  prisoner  and  handed  over 
to  the  Romans,  and  that  Tiridates,  the  rebel  com- 
petitor, had  taken  refuge  with  them.  The  object  of 
the  Great  King's  embassy  was  to  demand  the  surren- 
der of  both  these  princes — a  serious  matter  because 
it  reopened  the  most  dangerous  of  the  Eastern  ques- 
tions. The  ambassadors  came  to  Augustus,  but  he, 
as  a  zealous  upholder  of  the  constitution,  referred 
them  to  the  senate  in  whom  under  the  constitution  the 
control  of  foreign  affairs  was  vested.  The  senate, 
however,  after  mature  consideration  sent  them  back 
to  Augustus,  recognizing  that  he  knew  better  how  to 
solve  the  problem  than  the  supreme  council  of  the 
republic.  The  other  occun-ence  v/as  a  famine  accom- 
panied by  a  flood  of  the  Tiber,  which  devastated  Rome. 
The  fact  that  Augustus  had  ceased  for  several  months 
to  be  consul  was  enough  to  cause  a  revolt  among  the 
homeless-  and  hungry  populace  against  the  negligence 
of  the  magistrates.  They  demanded  that  he  should 
resume  the  consulship  or  that  he  should  be  invested 
with  dictatorial  powers  as  Pompey  had  been  in  57, 
and  should  take  charge  of  the  victualling  of  the  capital. 
The  popular  clamour  was  so  great  that  Augustus  had 
to  assume  plenary  power  over  the  corn  supply.  But 
this  did  not  satisfy  the  people.  Their  confidence  in 
Augustus  was  so  great  and  their  desire  for  a  stronger 
administration  was  so  keen  that  they  demanded  that 
he  should  at  once  assume  the  consulship  for  life  or  the 
censorship  or  the  dictatorship — any  form  of  power,  in 
fact,  whereby  he  could  exercise  an  energetic,  rapid,  and 
absolute  authority.  Augustus  demurred,  for  he  knew 
by  experience  the  dangers  of  dictatorship.     But  the 


82  The  Augustan  Republic 

situation  was  so  serious  that  it  was  necessary  to  come 
to  some  agreement  on  the  subject.  The  senate  said 
nothing  of  the  censorship  or  of  a  dictatorship  but  the}' 
gave  him  power  to  issue  edicts  exactly  as  if  he  were 
consul,  when  he  thought  it  necessary  in  the  public 
interest.  In  other  words  Augustus  now  received  for 
Rome  and  Italy  the  discretionary  power  of  super- 
vision which  he  had  so  recently  received  in  regard  to 
the  provinces.  The  old  aristocracy  was  now  incapa- 
ble of  sustaining  the  weight  of  government.  A  new 
social  order  which  could  replace  it  did  not  3^et  exist; 
all  the  burden  of  empire  fell  on  Augustus  and,  whether 
he  would  or  no,  he  had  to  shoulder  it.  In  a  single 
year,  only  a  few  months  after  Augustus  had  made  a 
determined  effort  to  retire  into  private  life,  the  senate 
had  abdicated  in  his  favour  their  control  of  foreign 
policy  and  had  granted  him  that  power  of  issuing 
edicts  which  was  to  be  the  germ  of  the  future 
monarchical  despotism. ' 

19.  Augustus's  Journey  to  the  East  (21-19  B.C.). 
In  the  following  year  Augustus,  as  if  to  demonstrate 
by  facts  the  provisional  character  of  the  government 
of  the  provinces  which  he  had  assumed  in  27  B.C.  and 
his  firm  resolve  to  restore  them  gradually  to  the  re- 
public as  they  were  reduced  to  order,  handed  over 
Cyprus  and  Gallia  Narbonensis  to  the  senate.  At  the 
same  time  he  prepared  for  his  first  tour  of  the  Asiatic 

'  In  the  lex  de  imperio  Vespasmni  (C.  /.  L.,  vi.,  930,  17-19)  we 
read:  uHque  qucBcunque  ex  usu  reipublicce  tnaiestate  divinarum 
huma{na.)rum  publicarum  privatarumque  rerum  esse  censebit,  ei 
agere  facere  ius  potestasque  sit  ita  uti  divo  Augusta.  .  .  .  The 
reasons  why  we  believe  that  it  was  at  this  particular  juncture 
that  this  practically  unlimited  power  was  conferred  on  Augustus 
are  set  forth  in  G.  Ferrero,  The  Greatness  and  Decline  of  Rome, 
vol.  iv.,  pp.  248-249. 


Augustus's  Journey  to  the  East  83 

provinces    which    were    still    regarded    as    the    most 
flourishing  part  of  the  empire. 

From  this  journey  Italy  expected  nothing  less  than 
the  conquest  of  Armenia  and  Parthia.  Augustus, 
however,  had  the  more  useful  though  more  modest 
aim  of  reaching  a  final  and  honourable  settlement  of 
the  Parthian  dispute  (on  the  subject  of  which  he  had 
been  negotiating  since  the  arrival  of  the  ambassadors) 
and  of  confirming  the  authority  of  the  empire  even 
among  the  independent  kingdoms  of  these  parts.  He 
left  Rome  in  the  spring  of  21  and  stopped  in  Greece 
whose  ancient  and  deep-seated  ills  he  sought  to  remedy. 
To  placate  national  sentiment,  he  again  separated 
Greece  from  the  province  of  Macedonia,  decorated  it 
with  the  picturesque  name  of  Acheea,  and  defined  its 
territories  so  as  to  include  Thessaly,  Epirus,  the 
Ionian  islands,  Euboea,  and  several  other  islands  of 
the  Archipelago.  Corinth  was  made  the  capital,  and, 
by  reorganizing  the  ancient  Amphictyonic  Council 
which  met  every  year  at  Delphi,  an  attempt  was  made 
to  establish  a  diet  with  annual  meetings — a  revised 
and  enlarged  imitation  of  the  Achasan  League — to 
which  all  the  Greek  cities  were  to  send  representatives. 
Autonomy  was  at  the  same  time  granted  to  several 
Greek  cities. 

From  Greece  Augustus  went  on  to  Asia  Minor  where 
he  found  the  province  of  Asia  busy  with  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  great  temple  in  his  honour,  and  in 
founding  the  cult  of  the  new  God  on  earth,  Augustus. 
Antony  had  experienced  something  of  the  same  sort 
at  Alexandria.  The  adoration  of  dead  monarchs  in 
Asia  and  of  living  ones  in  Egypt  had  been  one  of  the 
numerous  expedients  adopted  by  Hellenism  in  impos- 
ing  its   great   schemes   of   economic   and  industrial 


84  The  Augustan  Republic 

domination  on  the  native  races  of  Asia  and  Africa. 
Now  the  cult  was  being  timidly  extended  to  the  new 
magistrate  who  was  arising  at  Rome  amid  so  many 
uncertainties  and  contradictions,  still  wishing  to  be  a 
republican  official  but  finding  it  no  longer  possible. 
It  was  as  if  the  Eastern  peoples  wished  to  tell  Rome 
that  it  was  her  destiny  also  to  fall  under  the  same 
monarchical  institutions  by  which  they  had  been 
governed  for  so  many  centuries.  Augustus  accepted 
the  dedication  of  the  temple  on  condition  that  Rome 
was  associated  with  his  own  person  as  an  object  of  the 
cult.  He  then  turned  his  mind  to  the  solution  of  the 
Parthian  and  Armenian  question.  Armenia,  which 
had  been  conquered  by  Antony,  had  again  come  under 
the  government  of  a  native  monarch,  whose  policy 
was  hostile  to  Rome  and  under  Parthian  influences. 
Augustus,  therefore,  had  made  up  his  mind  to  use 
great  forces  to  recover  the  lost  hegemony.  But,  in  the 
winter  of  21  and  20,  while  the  Roman  and  allied  forces 
were  concentrating  on  the  frontiers  of  Armenia,  a 
revolution  broke  out.  The  king  was  overthrown 
and  slain,  and  the  insurgents  declared  for  accepting 
the  Roman  supremacy.  Augustus  did  not  annex  the 
country  but  gave  it  to  Tigranes  the  brother  of  the 
late  king,  a  prince  friendly  to  the  Romans,  whom  he 
had  taken  prisoner  at  Alexandria  after  Actium  and 
whom  he  had  caused  to  be  educated  at  Rome  in  a 
manner  befitting  a  king's  son.  Shortly  afterwards 
Phraates,  King  of  Parthia,  carried  out  the  agreement 
which  had  been  concluded  after  long  and  difficult 
negotiations  and  sent  back  to  the  Roman  camp  the 
standards  and  prisoners  taken  at  the  time  of  the  ill- 
starred  expedition  of  Crassus  accompanied  by  pleni- 
potentiaries charged  to  conclude  a  definitive  treaty 


Social  Legislatiofj  of  the   Year  i8  B.C.    85 

of  peace  with  Rome.  This  treaty  was  a  very  different 
thing  from  the  conquest  of  Parthia  of  which  many 
people  at  Rome  had  dreamed.  It  was  a  wise  and 
reasonable  compromise  whereby  Parthia  definitely 
abandoned  all  participation  in  Mediterranean  politics 
and  surrendered  Anatolia  and  Syria  to  Rome,  while 
Rome  on  the  other  hand  gave  up  the  programme  of 
Alexander,  Caesar,  and  Antony  and  pledged  herself 
not  to  penetrate  central  Asia.  But  the  advantages 
which  accrued  to  Rome  were  great,  for  the  treaty  was 
to  assure  a  century  of  peace  between  Rome  and  Par- 
thia, a  century  during  which  Rome  was  to  recover 
full  liberty  of  action  in  Europe,  and  to  be  free  to  take 
up  the  policy  of  the  Romanization  of  Gaul  which  was 
the  source  of  modern  civilization.  This  is  why  the 
treaty  should  be  considered  as  one  of  the  most  signal 
of  Augustus's  services  to  Rome. 

20,  The  Great  Social  Le2islation  of  the  Year  18 
B.C.  Augustus  returned  to  Europe  in  the  second 
half  of  the  year  1 9  and  found  the  capital  full  of  agita- 
tion, discord,  and  disputes.  The  old  families  were  more 
hostile  than  ever  to  the  new  men,  the  public  service 
was  as  usual  neglected,  the  populace  was  discontented, 
and  there  had  been  a  great  growth  in  public  favour  of 
the  movement  which  began,  as  we  saw,  in  the  last 
days  of  the  triumvirate,  and  which  we  described  as 
traditionalist  and  puritan.  This  movement,  headed 
at  the  same  time  by  the  old  nobility  and  by  a  portion 
of  the  middle  and  intellectual  class,  had  become 
bolder  and  demanded  a  purification  of  the  senate,  by 
which  was  meant  the  expulsion  of  all  the  intruders 
whom  the  revolution  had  permitted  to  enter  it,  the 
restoration  of  a  timocratic  constitution  excluding 
from  all  office  those  not  possessed  of  a  certain  fortune, 


86  The  Augustan  Republic 

and  legislation  which  would  impose  a  more  modest 
and  virtuous  life  on  the  rich,  would  repress  the  scandals 
of  private  life  and  put  down  the  luxury  of  the  aris- 
tocracy and  what  was  called  the  corruption  of  women. 
The  movement  ■  grew  so  strong  that  it  became  ever 
more  difficult  for  Augustus  to  disregard  it.  It  was, 
however,  not  easy  to  satisfy  the  agitators,  still 
less  so  because  the  decennial  powers  assvimed  by 
Augustus  in  27  expired  with  the  year  18,  and  he  had 
in  mind  a  reform  of  the  constitution  which  would 
relieve  him  of  part  of  his  cares  and  responsibilities. 
So  little  was  Augustus  thinking  of  setting  up  a  mon- 
archy that  he  proposed  to  divide  his  power  with  M. 
Vipsandus  Agrippa  who  had  recently  married  his 
daughter  Julia.  In  fact  Rome  and  Italy  were  expect- 
ing of  Augustus  a  more  strenuous  government  which 
would  carry  out  great  reforms,  at  the  very  time  when 
Augustus  had  decided  to  share  his  powers  with 
Agrippa.  As  always  it  was  necessary  on  this  occasion 
once  again  to  arrive  at  a  compromise.  Augustus's 
powers  were  prolonged  for  another  five  years,  begin- 
ning with  17,  and  Agrippa  was  placed  by  his  side  as  his 
colleague  with  equal  powers. '  Thereupon  Augustus 
with  his  new  colleague  carried  out  a  lectio  senatus, 
or  in  other  words  they  took  in  hand  the  purification 
of  the  senate  which  the  puritan  party  was  loudly 
demanding.  This  having  been  accomplished  with 
much  prudence  and  consideration  he  proposed  the 
measure  which  is  known  to  history  as  the  lex  Julia 
de  maritandis  ordinibus,  the  first  of  a  series  of  laws 
by  which  Augustus  tried  to  restore  the  ancient  moral- 

•  Dion    Cass.,  liv.,  12.     Ferrero,  The  Greatness  and  Decline  of 
Rome,  vol.  v.,  page  56. 


Social  Legislation  of  the   Year  i8  B.C.    87 

ity  of  Rome.    But  the  expedients  that  had  to  be  used 
were  complicated  indeed ! 

The  leading  principle  of  the  law  was  that  marriage 
was  a  duty  incumbent  on  all  Roman  citizens.  It  re- 
garded not  as  marriage  but  as  concubinage  the  union 
of  a  senator  or  of  any  of  his  descendants  with  a  freed- 
woman  and  laid  down  that  in  the  senatorial  order 
only  sons  born  of  a  free  and  virtuous  woman  should 
be  regarded  as  legitimate  and  entitled  to  the  privileges 
of  their  rank,  and  not  such  as  had  for  their  mother  an 
elegant  Syrian  dancer  or  a  fascinating  Jewish  freed- 
woman.  Even  in  the  case  of  plebeians  the  law  did  not 
recognize  as  valid  m.arriage  but  regarded  as  con- 
cubinage, unions  with  prostitutes,  procuresses,  adul- 
teresses, or  actresses.  This  was  all  very  well,  but  how 
were  men  and  women  to  be  compelled  to  marry?  To 
attain  this  object  Augustus  invented  an  ingenious 
system  of  rewards  and  punishments  to  appeal  to  the 
selfishness  of  unmarried  persons.  Senators  having 
wives  and  families  received  a  regular  scale  of  advan- 
tages laid  down  by  the  law.  For  instance  among  the 
magistrates  he  who  had  the  most  sons  took  prece- 
dence. Every  citizen  could  anticipate  the  legal  age 
for  holding  any  office  by  the  same  number  of  years  as 
he  had  sons.  A  woman  who  had  been  thrice  fertile 
was  by  that  fact  alone  entitled  to  enjoy  practically  an 
equality  with  men,  and  so  forth.  By  analogy  the 
law  released  from  certain  obligations  to  their  former 
masters  freedmen  who  had  more  than  two  sons.  On 
the  other  hand  those  who  obstinately  remained  single 
were  to  be  excluded  from  all  public  festivals  and 
spectacles,  and  were  deprived  of  the  right  to  receive 
legacies  from  any  one  not  related  to  them,  at  any  rate 
in  the  sixth  degree. 


88  The  Augustan  Republic 

The  law,  as  it  is  easy  to  see,  was  both  conservative 
and  revolutionary,  for,  in  order  to  restore  ancient 
manners,  it  subverted  several  immemorial  principles 
of  the  Roman  law.  It  recognized  marriages  between 
plebians  and  freedwomen ;  it  limited  the  rights  of  the 
pair  onus  over  his  liber  tus  and  the  freedom  of  bequest. 
It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  it  required  the 
support  of  other  and  complementary  enactments. 
How,  indeed,  could  it  be  pretended  that  an  honest  and 
serious-minded  man  should  be  compelled  to  marry  if 
he  had  no  means  of  restraining  the  prodigality,  the 
luxury,  or  the  frivolity  of  his  wife?  The  lex  de  maril- 
andis  ordinibus  was  accordingly  followed  by  two 
other  new  laws,  one  a  lex  sumptuaria,  the  other  the 
famous  lex  Julia  de  pudicitia  et  de  coercendis  adulteriis . 
The  first  clearly  aimed  at  restraining  the  luxury  of 
women,  of  banquets,  and  of  the  whole  private  life  of 
the  citizen.  The  second  authorized  a  father,  as  in 
ancient  times,  to  punish  with  death  an  adulterous 
daughter  and  her  paramour.  It  authorized  the  hus- 
band in  certain  circumstances  to  kill  the  paramour  but 
not  the  wife,  and  further  it  obliged  the  husband  or,  if 
the  husband  were  unable  or  unwilling,  the  father,  to 
denounce  the  wife  or  daughter  guilty  of  adultery  to 
the  praetor  or  the  qucEstio  within  sixty  days.  If  he 
failed  to  discharge  his  duty  anybody  was  at  liberty, 
after  the  lapse  of  sixty  days,  to  lay  an  information. 
Those  guilty  of  adultery  were  declared  iudicia  publica, 
as  in  the  case  of  parricides,  and  the  penalties  were  very 
severe — banishment  for  life  for  the  two  guilty  parties 
and,  in  addition,  for  the  man,  the  confiscation  of  half 
of  his  property  and,  for  the  woman,  the  loss  of  her 
dowry  and  of  a  third  of  her  own  property. 

Laws  of  such  a  character  may   appear  to  us  so 


Gaul  and  Germany  89 

terrible  as  to  be  inexplicable.  It  is,  however,  easy  to 
explain  them  when  we  remember  that  they  applied 
only  to  Roman  citizens  and  in  reality  were  aimed 
merely  at  senators  and  knights  whose  riches  and  fame 
were  alone  sufficient  to  tempt  accusers  by  the  hope  of 
what  they  might  make  out  of  the  goods  of  the  accused. 
This  consideration  reveals  to  us  the  real  character  of 
the  laws,  which  aimed  less  at  a  general  increase  of  the 
Roman  birthrate  than  at  a  restoration  of  the  aristo- 
cracy by  an  economic  and  moral  reorganization  of  the 
families  of  the  old  nobility;  that  is  of  the  old  nursery 
of  generals  and  diplomatists  who  had  made  the  empire 
and  created  the  glory  of  Rome.  Here  again  Augustus 
took  a  course  exactly  opposite  to  that  which  the 
founders  of  absolute  monarchies  invariably  follow, 
aiming  as  they  always  do  at  the  break  up  of  existing 
aristocracies.  This  is  confirmed  by  two  provisions, 
one  in  the  lex  de  aduUeriis  itself  and  the  other  in  a 
law  passed  at  the  same  time.  By  the  first  of  these 
provisions,  the  object  of  which  was  to  consolidate  the 
economic  basis  of  wealthy  families,  Augustus  forbade 
a  husband  to  sell  or  pledge  in  any  way  his  wife's 
dowry.  By  the  second  he  forbade  citizens  possessed 
of  an  income  of  less  than  400,000  sesterces  to  aspire 
to  public  office.  Thus  the  portals  of  the  public  service 
were  again  closed  to  the  poorer  classes  and  the  timo- 
cratic  constitution  was  solemnly  re-established.  The 
son  of  Caesar  reconstituted  from  its  foundations  the 
aristocracy  against  which  his  father  had  struggled  so 
long,  and  did  all  he  could  to  restore  the  very  class 
which,  willingly  or  unwillingly,  his  father  had  half 
destroyed. 

21 .     The  Development  of  Gaul  and  the  Conquest  of 
Germany  (12-8  B.C.).   The  passing  of  these  great  social 


90  The  AugustaJi  Republic 

laws  was  celebrated  in  the  year  17  by  a  solemn  cere- 
mony, the  ludi  sczculares,  first  instituted  in  509  B.C. 
at  the  beginning  of  the  republic  and  repeated  in  every 
century  though  not  at  precisely  fixed  anniversaries. 
It  was  for  this  ceremony  that  Horace  composed  the 
carmen  scBCularc,  the  most  harmonious  of  Roman 
hymns.  Sung  in  the  temple  of  Apollo  on  the  Palatine 
by  twenty-seven  youths  and  twenty-seven  maidens, 
it  begged  the  gods  to  bestow  on  Rome  peace,  power, 
glory,  prosperity,  fertility,  and  virtue.  But  while  at 
Rome  these  laws  were  being  passed  and  these  festivals 
observed,  a  great  storm  was  arising  in  the  European 
provinces,  so  recently  and  so  imperfectly  subdued, 
that  is  to  say  in  the  valleys  of  the  Alps,  in  Gaul,  and  in 
Pannonia.  This  was  to  a  large  extent  one  of  the  conse- 
quences of  the  peace  and  good  government  introduced 
by  Augustus.  With  the  coming  of  peace  had  ceased 
the  frequent  military  levies  for  the  Roman  civil  wars 
which  had  been  a  perfect  godsend  to  all  the  idle 
adventurers  of  the  last  generation.  Augustus's  good 
administration  was  beginning  to  result  in  a  strict  and 
regular  collection  of  the  taxes.  And  so  it  came  about 
that  in  the  early  part  of  16  B.C.  a  storm  burst  on  the 
frontiers  of  Italy.  Transalpine  Gaul  was  in  a  ferment. 
In  the  Alps  the  Vennonetes  (who  inhabited  the  Val- 
tellina  and  perhaps  also  the  valleys  of  the  Adige  and 
the  upper  Inn)  and  the  Camuni,  who  lived  in  the  Val 
Camonica,  flew  to  arms.  The  Bessi  revolted  in  Thrace 
against  King  Rimetalces  who  had  been  imposed  on 
them  by  the  Romans.  Macedonia  was  invaded  by 
several  barbarous  tribes,  the  DentheletcC,  the  Scor- 
disci,  and  perhaps  also  the  Sarmatians.  Pannonia 
and  Noricum,  hitherto  under  the  protection  of  Rome, 
rebelled  and  invaded  Istria.    The  conflagration  spread 


Gaul  and  Germany  91 

rapidly,  especially  in  the  Alps.  The  Trumpli  in  the 
Val  Trompia  and  the  numerous  tribes  of  the  Lepontii 
who  lived  in  the  Italian  and  Swiss  valleys  leading  to 
the  Lago  Maggiore  and  the  Lago  di  Orta,  the  Rhse- 
tians  and  the  Vindelicians  who  extended  from  the 
Grisons  country  across  Bavaria  as  far  as  the  Danube, 
the  inhabitants  of  the  Cottian  Alps,  and,  finally,  the 
Ligurians  of  the  Maritime  Alps,  had  risen  in  rebellion. 
Practically  the  whole  of  the  great  mountain  chain  in 
which  survived  the  last  remnants  of  the  races  which 
had  once  inhabited  the  plains — the  Iberians,  the  Celti, 
and  the  Etruscans — was  in  flames.  At  the  same  time 
a  Germanic  horde  invaded  Gaul  and  defeated  Marcus 
LoUius,  the  Roman  legate. 

Augustus  could  not  remain  at  Rome  drafting  laws 
and  celebrating  festivals  when  the  fate  of  the  whole  of 
the  Western  Empire  seemed  to  be  trembling  in  the 
balance.  It  was  clear  that  military  operations  on  a 
great  scale  as  well  as  a  thorough  reorganization  of 
these  provinces  would  be  necessary  in  order  to  con- 
solidate the  authority  of  Rome.  By  good  fortune  the 
German  invasion  of  Gaul  was  not  serious.  The  mere 
appearance  of  Augustus  was  enough  to  secure  the 
recoil  of  the  wave.  After  the  retreat  of  the  Germans 
the  most  serious  revolt  was  that  in  the  Alps  v/hich 
threatened  to  cut  off  Italy  from  her  western  provinces. 
Augustus  decided  in  the  first  place  to  commence  a 
series  of  methodical  operations  in  the  chief  Alpine 
valleys  in  order  to  subdue  their  populations  once  and 
for  all.  He  entrusted  the  conduct  of  these  operations 
to  three  generals,  P.  Silius,  who  shortly  before  this  had  » 
freed  Istria  from  the  Pannonians  and  the  Noricans, 
and  to  the  two  young  sons  of  his  wife  Livia — Tiberius, 
the  praetor  of  the  year,  who  had  already  accompanied 


92  The  Atigustan  Republic 

Augustus  in  Spain  and  in  Armenia,  and  his  younger 
brother  Drusus,  then  twenty-two  years  old,  who  had 
been  elected  quaestor  for  the  year  15.  The  young 
Drusus  had  excellent  qualities.  He  had  all  the  energy, 
the  courage,  and  the  pride  of  Tiberius,  but  conjoined 
with  such  amiability  that  in  him  the  traditional 
Roman  virtues  seemed  to  become  agreeable  and 
attractive,  and  he  was  universally  popular.  All  this, 
however,  was  not  enough  in  itself  to  justify  Augustus 
in  nominating  a  mere  quasstor  as  his  lieutenant  in  a 
war  of  such  importance.  There  must  have  been  more 
serious  reason ;  perhaps  the  lack  of  capable  men  whom 
the  prince  could  entirely  trust.  It  is  clear  at  any  rate 
that  the  appointment  of  Drusus  was  a  violent  de- 
parture from  the  strict  republican  tradition,  for, 
according  to  the  principles  of  Roman  public  law,  Dru- 
sus was  too  young  for  a  command  of  such  importance. 
The  operations  of  Silius  against  the  Lepontii  and 
those  of  Drusus  and  Tiberius  against  the  Rhaetians 
and  the  Vindelicians  were  entirely  successful.  The 
two  young  men  carried  the  frontiers  of  the  empire  as 
far  as  the  Danube  and  conquered  Noricum  (15  B.C.). 
Not  long  afterwards  the  insurrections  in  the  Cottian 
and  Maritime  Alps  were  subdued,  the  male  popula- 
tion was  enslaved,  the  property  of  the  tribes  and  of  the 
rich  families  of  the  country  was  confiscated,  and  their 
territories  divided  among  the  towns  of  Cisalpine  Gaul. 
In  Noricum  the  native  dynasty  was  abolished  and  a 
provincial  regime  similar  to  that  in  Egypt  was  estab- 
lished. That  is  to  say  the  country  was  thenceforth 
governed  by  a  prcsfectus.  In  the  Cottian  Alps  also 
the  native  dynasty  lost  the  royal  title  but  the  chief 
continued  to  govern  the  country  under  the  title  of 
prcsfectus.       On  the  other  hand  Rhaetia,  Vindelicia. 


Gaul  and  Germany  93 

and  all  the  country  from  the  crest  of  the  Alps  to  the 
Danube  and  from  Lake  Leman  to  the  frontier  of 
Noricum  was  made  into  a  province.  Finally  Augus- 
tus conceived  the  plan  of  opening  up  great  strategic 
routes  between  the  new  provinces  and  the  valley  of 
the  Po  so  that,  without  creating  new  military  units, 
the  legions  stationed  in  that  valley  could  be  rapidly 
moved  to  the  defence  of  any  threatened  point. 

By  these  expeditions  Augustus  completed  a  work 
the  effects  of  which  have  lasted  to  this  day;  for  he 
opened  up  this  famous  chain  of  mountains  to  civiliza- 
tion. The  task  was  heavy,  but  Augustus  intended  it 
to  be  merely  a  preparation  to  a  still  more  vast  under- 
taking, which  was  to  be  of  even  greater  consequence 
in  the  history  of  civilization.  The  years  following 
16  B.C.  which,  owing  to  the  demands  of  the  war  were 
spent  by  Augustus  in  Gaul  or  in  its  neighbourhood, 
were  decisive  both  in  his  history  and  in  that  of  the 
ancient  world,  for  they  were  the  years  in  which  he 
and  the  Roman  government  came  to  see  that  Gaul, 
the  barbarous,  chilly,  poverty-stricken  Gaul  of  tradi- 
tion, was  an  extremely  rich  province  which  was  rapidly 
growing  richer,  a  veritable  Egypt  in  the  West,  which 
might  be  as  valuable  to  Rome  as  Egypt  itself  and 
which  it  was  as  much  Rome's  interest  to  defend  as  the 
richest  province  of  the  East.  The  consequences  of 
this  discovery  were  destined  to  be  formidable.  So  far 
Rome  had  looked  above  all  (and  almost  solely)  to  the 
East  as  the  seat  of  civilization,  riches,  and  culture. 
Hence  she  was  always  in  danger  of  being  absorbed 
by  the  East  and  of  being  transformed  into  an  Asiatic 
empire.  From  this  moment  she  became  a  power, 
half  Asiatic  and  half  European,  in  whose  empire  Gaul 
formed  the  counterpoise  of  Egypt  and  Syria,  and  Italy 


94  The  Augustan  Republic 

was  well  placed  in  the  midst  for  becoming  the  arbitress 
and  the  sovereign  of  the  Orient  and  the  Occident  alike. 
From  this  moment  also  Grasco-Latin  civilization 
overcame  the  obstacle  of  the  Alps  and  penetrated  the 
European  continent ;  there  was  a  real  beginning  of  the 
history  of  Europe,  hitherto  a  barbarous  continent 
except  for  its  southern  coasts,  and  the  Roman  Empire 
became  a  mixed  empire,  half  occidental,  half  oriental, 
united  under  the  hegemony  of  Italy.  Had  it  not  been 
for  the  growing  riches  of  Gaul,  it  is  clear  that  Rome 
would  not  have  been  able  to  remain  for  long  the  capital 
of  an  empire  whose  most  important  provinces  and 
whose  greatest  interests  were  in  Asia  and  in  Africa 
and  that,  sooner  or  later,  Italy  would  have  been 
absorbed  by  her  Asiatic  and  African  conquests.  In 
other  words  the  unity  of  Rome's  Mediterranean 
empire  and  the  predominant  position  of  Italy  de- 
pended on  the  possession  and  on  the  development  of 
Gaul. 

If  these,  however,  were  to  be  the  momentous  his- 
toric consequences  of  the  conquest  achieved  by  Cassar, 
the  immediate  effect  of  the  material  progress  of  Gaul 
was  that  Rome  had  to  turn  her  attention  to  the  de- 
fence of  that  country  against  the  Germans,  always 
restless  and  warlike,  and  all  the  more  inclined  to  attack 
Gaul  because  she  was  no  longer  defended  by  her  an- 
cient military  aristocracy.  Thus  the  German  danger 
was  no  longer,  as  in  the  time  of  Caesar,  a  Gallic  ques- 
tion, but  a  question  vital  to  the  Roman  Empire.  But 
how  was  Gaul  to  be  secured  against  the  incursions  of 
the  Germans  if  not  by  subduing  them  and  conquering 
their  country  ?  vSuch  is  the  logical  result  of  all  colonial 
conquests.  The  disturbances  in  the  western  provinces 
and  the  discovery,  more  and  more  confirmed  by  the 


Gaul  and  Germany  95 

course  of  events,  of  the  immense  importance  of  Gaul, 
led  Augustus  in  these  years  to  substitute  for  the  dream 
of  conquering  Persia,  which  had  been  cherished  by 
every  Roman,  the  idea  of  a  conquest  of  Germany. 
Rome  was  becoming  a  European  and  an  occidental 
power. 

Before  committing  himself  to  this  enterprise  Augus- 
tus was  anxious  to  remove  all  possible  chance  of  anti- 
Roman  agitations  in  Gaul  itself.  The  territorial 
divisions  which  Cassar  had  found  in  the  country  still 
existed.  The  more  powerful  peoples  such  as  the  ^dui 
and  the  Arverni  still  preserved,  as  allies  of  Rome,  their 
clientele  of  small  civitates  directly  under  their  govern- 
ment. Gaul,  however,  had  now  berime  a  commercial 
and  industrial  country  and  the  client  communities 
under  the  control  of  the  JE.6m\  and  the  Arverni  were 
either  useless  except  for  the  preservation  of  ancient 
privileges  and  for  the  support  of  fictitious  pretensions 
of  superiority,  or  were  actually  dangerous  to  Rome, 
inasmuch  as  they  might  be  made  to  serve  as  nuclei 
of  new  nationalist  coalitions. 

Augustus,  therefore,  placed  all  these  subordinate 
communities  under  the  direct  authority  of  Rom.e,  and 
indeed,  on  the  basis  of  the  results  of  the  census,  divided 
all  Gaul  into  sixty  civitates,  of  about  equal  size  and  all 
possessed  of  equal  rights.  As  this  increased  the  powers 
and  responsibilities  of  the  Roman  government  of 
Gaul,  he  partitioned  the  country  into  three  provinces : 
Aquitania,  Lugdvmensis,  and  Belgica  (the  Tres  Gallicc), 
each  of  which  was  to  be  under  a  lieutenant  of  the 
governor-general  of  the  province.  In  this  partition 
Augustus  took  no  account  of  the  ethnic  diversities  or 
affinities  or  the  immemorial  historic  unities  of  the 
country,  except  in  so  far  as  he  made  each  administra- 


96  The  Augmtan  Repjihlic 

tivc  unit  a  mixture  of  the  three  diverse  elements — 
Celtic,  Iberian,  and  Celto-germanic — of  which  the 
population  was  composed,  in  order  to  extinguish  the 
ancient  and  traditional  spirit  of  nationalism,  to  impede 
understandings  between  kindred  tribes,  and  to  bend 
the  country  thus  denationalized  to  the  purposes  of 
Roman  policy. 

Before  entering  on  his  great  undertaking  Augustus 
felt  that  it  was  necessary  to  reorganize  the  army. 
He  therefore  passed  a  law  settling  certain  of  the 
more  important  conditions  of  service  hitherto  regu- 
lated only  by  vague  tradition.  The  term  of  service 
was  fixed  at  sixteen  years  for  the  legionaries  and 
at  twelve  for  the  praetorian  guard  of  the  imperator. 
It  was  further  laid  down  that,  when  their  engage- 
ment came  to  an  end,  both  legionaries  and  praetorians 
should  receive  as  a  gratuity  not  land  but  a  sum  of 
money,  the  amount  of  which  is  unknown  to  us.  This 
having  been  settled,  preparations  for  the  expedition 
were  begun  on  an  adequate  scale,  and  a  highly  in- 
genious plan  of  invasion  was  worked  out  in  which  the 
hand  of  Agrippa  may  probably  be  traced.  It  was 
decided  to  attempt  the  penetration  of  Germany,  which 
was  no  easy  task,  from  the  North  Sea  by  the  two  great 
river  lines  of  the  Ems  and  the  Weser.  Following  these 
rivers  two  armies  were  to  work  their  way  into  the 
heart  of  the  country.  On  each  of  the  rivers  was  to  be 
constructed  a  great  entrenched  camp  which  would 
serve  as  a  base  of  operations  for  completing  the  con- 
quest of  the  interior.  Simultaneously  another  army, 
having  crossed  the  Rhine,  was  to  be  directed  towards 
the  Ems.  The  army  of  the  Ems  was  to  advance 
slowly  and  endeavour  to  join  hands  with  the  force 
coming  from  the  Rhine  and  that  approaching  from 


Gaul  and  Germany  97 

the  Weser.  Thus  by  a  widely  sweeping  operation 
flanked  by  fortifications  the  Rhine  was  to  be  linked 
with  the  Ems,  the  Ems  with  the  Weser  and  perhaps 
even  with  the  Elbe.  The  plan  was  excellent  for  it 
reduced  to  a  minimum  the  risks  to  which  the  invading 
armies  were  exposed.  But,  as  the  Roman  river  flotil- 
las would  have  been  too  long  exposed  to  the  storms  of 
the  North  Sea,  it  was  decided  to  open  a  canal  be- 
tween the  Rhine  and  the  Yssel  so  that  the  Roman  fleet 
could  safely  enter  the  Zuiderzee  (Lacus  Flevo)  and 
thence,  through  the  communicating  channel,  the 
North  Sea  itself. 

This  great  expedition,  which  was  to  be  the  cause  of 
so  many  sorrows  to  Augustus,  commenced  under  the 
shadow  of  a  great  bereavement.  Augustus  had  easily 
obtained  from  the  senate  the  prolongation  for  another 
five  years  of  the  powers  accorded  to  himself  and  to 
Agrippa  which  expired  at  the  end  of  the  year  13.  He 
was  actively  pushing  on  the  preparation  for  the  war 
in  Germany  when,  in  March  in  the  year  12,  a  few 
days  after  Augustus's  election  as  pontifex  maximiis 
on  the  death  of  Lepidus,  Agrippa  died  in  Campania 
at  the  very  moment  when  the  invasion  of  Ger- 
many was  to  be  begun.  The  loss  of  such  a  coad- 
jutor was  serious,  both  because  Augustus,  who  had 
hoped  to  share  the  cares  and  responsibilities  of  power 
with  him,  was  now  again  forced  to  assume  the  govern- 
ment of  the  republic  alone,  and  because,  on  the  eve 
of  an  expedition  of  capital  importance,  Rome  was 
deprived  of  the  most  experienced  soldier  on  whom  she 
could  rely.  The  death  of  Agrippa  seems,  in  fact,  to 
have  induced  Augustus  to  postpone  the  war  with 
Germany.  For  the  moment,  he  contented  himself 
with  sending  Tiberius  to  put  down  a  revolt  which  had 


98  The  Augustan  Republic 

broken  out  in  Pannonia.  It  was  not  till  late  in  the 
year  that  he  resolved  to  resume  the  larger  plan,  and 
charged  Drusus,  then  a  youthful  praetor  of  26,  with 
its  execution.  Following  Agrippa's  long  meditated 
design,  Drusus  with  part  of  his  troops  descended  the 
course  of  the  Rhine  and  entered  the  Zuiderzee,  thus 
penetrating  into  the  heart  of  the  country  of  the  Frisii 
(the  modern  Holland).  Thence  he  emerged  into  the 
North  Sea  with  the  fleet  and  sailed  up  the  Ems,  dis- 
embarking a  portion  of  his  forces  at  a  certain  point  on 
the  river.  He  then  redescended  the  river,  and  appears 
to  have  tried  to  repeat  on  the  Weser  the  operations 
he  had  already  carried  out  on  the  Ems.  This  time, 
however,  he  did  not  succeed,  and  in  fact  narrowly 
escaped  shipwreck.  At  the  end  of  the  year  12  he  was 
again  in  Gaul. 

These  operations  were  merely  the  preliminaries  of 
the  real  campaign  which  was  to  commence  in  the 
following  year  and,  according  to  Augustus's  plan,  was 
to  consist  in  a  slow,  methodical,  and  gradual  invasion. 
In  the  spring  of  11,  Drusus  was  to  ascend  the  valley 
of  the  Lippe  on  the  right  bank  with  his  army  and  was 
to  join  the  other  forces  already  disembarked  on  the 
banks  of  the  Ems,  which  in  their  turn  were  to  pro- 
gress towards  the  upper  course  of  that  river.  At  the 
confluence  of  the  Lippe  with  a  river  which  the  ancient 
historians  call  the  Aliso  he  was  to  construct  a  great 
fortress  which  was  to  be  connected  with  the  Rhine  by 
a  new  system  of  roads  and  a  chain  of  minor  forts. 
This  was  the  programme  set  before  Drusus  for  the 
year.  He  victoriously  ascended  the  valley  of  the 
Lippe  and  effected  his  junction  with  the  army  which 
had  ascended  the  Ems,  but  immediately  afterwards 
he  risked  a  departure  from  the  prudent  and  methodical 


Gaul  and  Germany  99 

plan  of  Augustus  and  Agrippa.  Finding  the  Germanic 
tribes  at  war  among  themselves  he  judged  that  an 
audacious  stroke  would  at  this  point  be  more  effectual 
than  a  long  and  cautious  campaign.  Hastily  collect- 
ing provisions,  he  traversed  the  country  of  the  Sicam- 
bri,  which  was  deserted  because  the  male  population 
had  thrown  themselves  on  the  country  of  Catti,  and 
invaded  the  territory  of  the  Tencteri  who  submitted 
to  him  in  terror.  Then,  as  if  gaining  new  courage  from 
his  own  audacity,  he  advanced  on  the  country  of  the 
Catti  and  compelled  them  and  their  Sicambrian 
opponents  to  recognize  the  overlordship  of  Rome. 
Want  of  provisions,  however,  and  the  natural  sterility 
of  the  country  very  soon  compelled  him  to  retire 
towards  the  Lippe.  On  his  return  march  he  fell  into 
an  ambuscade  and  was  very  nearly  annihilated  with 
all  his  army.  Escaping,  as  if  by  a  miracle  from  this 
great  peril,  he  regained  the  Lippe  where  he  resumed 
the  plan  of  Augustus  and  gave  directions  for  the  con- 
struction of  the  Castellum  which  was  called  Aliso. 
He  then  returned  to  Gaul  and  decided  to  build  another 
fortress  on  the  Rhine  which  in  all  probability  occupied 
the  site  of  the  future  Coblenz. 

The  third  year  of  the  war — 10  B.C. — seems  to  have 
passed  quietly  without  important  incident.  Probably 
the  Germans  were  quiescent  and  the  Romans  were 
busy  with  the  construction  of  the  two  fortresses  which 
had  been  begun  the  year  before.  It  is  at  any  rate 
certain  that  Drusus  was  able  to  go  to  Rome  in  this 
year  and  to  stand  for  and  be  elected  to  the  consulship 
for  the  year  9.  Before  the  end  of  the  year,  however, 
and  before  he  could  take  possession  of  his  high  office, 
Drusus  was  compelled  to  leave  the  capital  and  to 
return  in  all  haste  to  Germany  where  the  Sicambri, 


lOO  The  Augustan  Republic 

the  Suevi,  and  the  Cherusci  had  coalesced  for  an  attack 
on  Gaul.  In  the  following  year  (9  B.C.)  the  war  entered 
on  a  new  phase,  and,  whether  because  Drusus  had 
convinced  Augustus  of  the  necessity  of  striking  a  great 
blow  in  order  to  terrify  Germany  or  because  he  had 
been  convinced  of  this  necessity  by  the  ambitious 
projects  of  the  Sicambri,  the  Suevi,  and  the  Cherusci, 
Germany  was  in  this  year  invaded  in  earnest.  We 
do  not  know  by  what  routes  or  in  what  force  Drusus 
conducted  this  invasion  but  he  fought  his  way  first 
to  the  Weser  and  then  to  the  Elbe.  His  bold  move 
succeeded;  the  Germans  did  not  dare  to  attack  him  in 
mass,  and  Drusus  was  able  to  work  his  will  in  Ger- 
many until  early  in  August,  when,  owing  to  the  ad- 
vance of  the  season,  he  decided  to  return.  On  the 
way  back  he  broke  his  leg  owing  to  a  fall  from  his 
horse,  and  died  a  few  days  later  as  the  result  of  this 
accident.  The  death  of  Drusus  was  a  serious  loss  to 
the  republic,  but  more  especially  to  Augustus,  who, 
after  the  death  of  Agrippa,  was  now  deprived  of 
another  trusted  coadjutor  at  a  time  when  among  the 
senate  and  the  aristocracy  there  was  a  growing  re- 
luctance to  assume  high  office  and  the  ntmiber  of 
competent  men  was  decreasing.  The  young  men,  in 
particular,  were  unwilling  to  leave  Rome  and  to  pass 
long  years  in  the  provinces  in  a  severe  apprenticeship 
in  the  business  of  leading  armies.  It  appears,  in  fact, 
that  Augustus  once  more  formed  the  intention  of 
retiring  into  private  life  at  the  end  of  the  year  8,  when 
his  quinquennial  powers  expired.  He  had  now  gov- 
erned Rome  as  princeps  for  twenty  years  since  the 
restoration  of  the  republic,  and  he  had  earned  the 
right  to  repose.  But  who  was  to  be  put  in  his  place? 
Would  not  the  whole   administration  of  the  empire 


Gaul  and  Germany  loi 

fall  to  pieces  if  the  man  were  to  retire  who  fulfilled 
all  the  duties  for  which  the  senate  and  the  republi- 
can magistrates  failed  to  provide?  The  irremediable 
decadence  of  the  aristocracy  made  the  personal  power 
of  Augustus  indispensable  to  the  State.  He  was 
therefore  compelled,  whether  he  would  or  not,  to 
accept  a  further  prolongation  of  his  powers  for  ten 
years,  and,  to  deal  with  Germany,  he  summoned  his 
other  stepson  Tiberius  who  for  three  years  had  been 
fighting  in  Pannonia  and  Dalmatia,  and  charged  him 
with  the  task  of  completing  the  conquest  of  that 
country.  Tiberius  had  now  also  become  his  son-in-law, 
for,  in  the  year  ii  Augustus  had  compelled  him  to 
repudiate  his  wife  who  was  a  daughter  of  Agrippa, 
and  to  marry  Agrippa's  widow  who  was  his  own 
daughter  Julia.  In  the  year  8  Tiberius  had  merely  to 
cross  the  Rhine  at  the  head  of  an  army  to  receive  the 
submission  of  all  Germany.  The  march  of  Drusus  had 
borne  fruit.  Within  four  years  Germany  had  been,  or 
at  least  appeared  to  have  been,  conquered  from  the 
Rhine  to  the  Elbe,  and  the  great  enterprise  first 
attempted  by  Cajsar  had  been  successfully  accom- 
plished by  his  son. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  THE  SUCCESSION  OF  AUGUSTUS 

22 .    The  Retirement  of  Tiberius  to  Rhodes  ( 1 6  B .  C .) . 

At  this  point  a  very  grave  crisis  arose  in  the  State 
which  may  be  said  to  have  lasted  until  the  death  of 
Nero,  that  is  to  say,  until  the  fall  of  the  Julio-Claudlan 
family.  Augustus  had  governed  the  republic  as 
princeps  for  twenty  years.  In  the  course  of  that 
period  the  clear  and  distinct  conception  which  inspired 
the  restoration  of  the  year  27  B.C.  had  become  much 
blurred.  The  authority  of  the  princeps  which  in  the 
original  design  of  the  reform,  was  to  have  been  tempor- 
ary, and  was  merely  to  have  served  to  control  the 
ancient  institutions  of  the  republic,  had  now  acquired 
a  life  tenure  and  had  been  transformed  into  a  real  and 
indispensable  directing  force  which  was  more  and 
more  displacing  the  antiquated  and  decadent  senate. 
But  no  one  complained  of  this.  In  the  course  of  these 
twenty  years  Augustus  had  behaved  with  so  much  tact, 
had  rendered  so  many  services  to  the  State,  had  now 
become  so  necessary,  had  gained  so  much  prestige  by 
restoring  peace  to  the  empire,  that  no  one  was  ag- 
grieved by  the  power  he  possessed.  Augustus,  how- 
ever, was  not  immortal  and  was  already  nearly  sixty. 
What  was  to  happen  when  he  died?  The  question 
was  already  in  the  public  mind.     Some  thought  that 

102 


Tlie  Retirement  of  Tiberius  to  Rhodes  103 

then  indeed,  the  ancient  republic  would  really  and 
finally  be  restored  without  a  princeps,  but  these 
were  few.  Men  of  sense  and  experience  understood 
that  without  a  capable  and  energetic  chief,  the  senate 
and  the  republic  would  come  to  a  standstill.  But 
who  was  capable  of  being  the  second  princeps?  If 
the  most  competent,  active,  and  experienced  man  in 
the  State  was  to  be  chosen,  it  was  clear,  after  the  death 
of  Agrippa  and  Drusus,  that  Tiberius  was  that  man. 
Tiberius,  however,  had  many  enemies.  He  was  not 
merely  a  haughty  Claudius,  of  obstinate  and  severe 
temper;  he  was  also  an  extreme  traditionalist,  a  man 
of  the  old  stamp,  who  would  have  liked  to  see  Rome 
governed  by  an  austere,  parsimonious,  energetic, 
zealous  aristocracy  such  as  that  of  the  third  century 
B.C.  In  the  new  generation,  on  the  contrary,  there 
was  a  growth  of  luxury  and  riches  and  of  the  taste  for 
pleasure.  The  refinements  and  the  vices  of  the  East 
were  becoming  more  and  more  widely  spread,  and 
with  these  there  was  an  increasing  indifference  to 
political  events  and  an  ever  greater  distaste  for  mili- 
tary service.  At  Rome  there  was,  therefore,  a  party 
against  Tiberius,  and  all  those  who  did  not  wish  the 
supreme  office  of  princeps  to  become  the  appanage 
of  a  single  family  (and  there  were  not  a  few  who  held 
this  opinion)  very  naturally  reinforced  this  opposition. 
This  state  of  matters  was  aggravated  by  the  marri- 
age with  Julia  which  Augustus  compelled  Tiberius  to 
contract  after  the  death  of  Agrippa.  This  marriage 
was  one  of  Augustus's  greatest  mistakes.  The  char- 
acters of  Tiberius  and  Julia  were  antipathetic.  Julia, 
an  elegant,  fashionable  woman,  fond  of  splendour  and 
courtly  observances  and  of  a  free  way  of  life,  repre- 
sented the  new  generation.    Tiberius,  stiff,  unbending, 


I04  Struggle  for  the  Succession  of  Augustus 

and  an  implacable  enemy  of  all  the  weaknesses  of  the 
jeunesse  doree,  represented  the  old.  Discord  soon 
broke  out  between  the  spouses  which  arose  not  merely 
from  incompatibility  of  temper  but  implied  also  a 
serious  political  antagonism,  the  antagonism  in  fact, 
between  the  party  of  the  young  nobility  and  the 
party  of  antique  tradition  which  was  now  beginning  to 
grow  serious.  It  appears  that  Julia  ended  not  only 
by  betraying  her  husband  but  also  by  putting  herself 
at  the  head  of  a  regular  coterie  of  young  noblemen 
who  were  plotting  to  exclude  him  from  eventually 
succeeding  Augustus.  They  used  every  means  in 
their  power  to  effect  this  object.  They  calumniated 
him  to  Augustus  and  to  the  people,  they  alienated 
his  friends  from  him  and,  finally,  they  tried  to  set  up 
rivals  against  him.  Agrippa  and  Julia  had  had  several 
sons,  of  whom  the  eldest  was  then  fourteen.  Having 
been  adopted  by  Augustus  he  was  called  Caius  Caesar. 
The  party  against  Tiberius  cast  their  eyes  on  this 
youth  as  a  possible  rival  heir,  and,  after  having  tried 
to  poison  his  mind  against  his  step-father,  certain 
members  of  the  party  proposed  a  law  to  the  comitia 
enabling  Caius  Caesar  to  be  made  consul  on  his  attain- 
ing the  age  of  twenty.  The  young  man,  as  Agrippa's 
son  and  the  adopted  son  of  Augustus,  was  much  be- 
loved by  the  populace  which  was  now  quite  accustomed 
to  rapid  elevations  of  this  kind  in  the  family  of 
the  princeps.  Tiberius's  enemies  counted  on  this 
sentiment  to  enable  them  to  secure  the  acceptance 
of  their  proposal.  Augustus  began  by  opposing  it 
with  all  his  authority,  for  he  understood  the  danger 
that  lurked  behind  this  manoeuvre.  But  it  was  not 
difficult  to  excite  the  people,  who  loved  the  Claudii 
little  and  the  Julii  much,  in  favour  of  Caius.     Julia 


Struggle  between  the  Julii  and  the  Claudii  105 

on  her  part  was  not  idle,  and  in  the  end,  Augustus 
gave  way,  and  permitted  Caius  Caesar  to  be  elected 
consul  five  3'ears  in  anticipation  of  his  assuming  office. 
He  hastened,  however,  to  give  Tiberius  the  great 
compensation  of  conferring  on  him  the  tribunician 
power  for  five  years,  thus  making  him  his  own 
colleague  as  Agrippa  had  been.  Tiberius,  however, 
was  a  true  Claudius  and  the  compensation  did  not 
induce  him  to  swallow  the  affront.  He  refused  the 
honour,  asked  Augustus  to  allow  him  to  retire  into 
private  life,  and  in  spite  of  Augustus's  entreaties  that 
he  should  remain,  he  betook  himself  to  the  island 
of  Rhodes  where  he  lived  in  voluntary  exile  (6  B.C.). 
23 .  The  Struggle  between  the  Julii  and  the  Claudii. 
The  departure  of  Tiberius  was  a  great  disaster  to  the 
State.  Augustus  remained  alone  at  the  head  of  the 
republic,  without  the  assistance  of  a  capable  and 
trusted  colleague,  and  the  result  was  that  the  ad- 
ministration rapidly  fell  back  into  the  negligence  and 
confusion  of  previous  times.  Such  order  as  had 
been  secured  by  the  exhausting  labour  of  twenty 
years  disappeared.  The  finances  again  became  so 
disordered  that  the  treasury  could  no  longer  keep  up 
the  payments  required  for  the  army.  Augustus,  how- 
ever, could  not  make  up  his  mind  to  prepare,  or  cause 
to  be  prepared,  a  reform  of  taxation,  and  preferred  in 
his  weariness  and  disillusion,  to  live  from  day  to  day, 
charging  his  own  personal  fortune  with  a  large  part 
of  the  public  expenditure  or  allowing  government 
services  to  lapse.  His  social  laws  were  every  day  less 
observed,  and  those  who  had  been  condemned  under 
the  lex  de  adulteriis  left  their  places  of  exile  and  dis- 
persed themselves  throughout  the  luxurious  cities  of 
the  East  and  the  West,  leading  a  life  of  pleasure.     The 


io6  Struggle  for  the  Succession  of  Augustus 

lex  de  maritandis  ordinibus,  which  had  struck  so  hard 
at  obstinate  ceHbacy,  was  easily  evaded  by  a  great 
number  of  childless  marriages  against  which  the  law 
had  not  provided.  The  army  also  was  disintegrating. 
Recruiting  in  Italy  became  every  day  more  difficult, 
for  the  natural  growth  of  the  riches  of  the  country 
was  such  that  free  men  easily  found  a  more  remunera- 
tive occupation  than  war.  It  was,  therefore,  neces- 
sary to  increase  continually  the  number  of  auxiliary 
corps  by  recruiting  an  even  greater  number  of  provin- 
cial Gauls,  Germans,  and  Syrians.  These,  however, 
still  further  impaired  the  moral  unity  of  the  forces, 
while  other  causes — among  them  the  absence  of  a 
leader  who  should  be  imperator  in  fact  as  well  as  in 
name — were  productive  of  much  indiscipline  among 
the  soldiers. 

The  most  miserable  spectacle,  however,  was  that  of 
the  senate,  into  which  Augustus  could  no  longer  instil 
even  a  semblance  of  vitality.  How  often  had  he  not 
tried,  and  what  means  had  he  not  used  to  make  it 
work  as  an  organ  of  the  State  ?  Now  he  had  filled  it 
with  new  elements  drawn  from  the  equestrian  order, 
threatening  that  he  would  exclude  them  from  the 
number  of  the  knights  if  they  would  not  consent  to 
enter  the  senate.  Again  he  had  punished  with  in- 
creasing fines  those  who  did  not  regularly  attend 
the  sittings,  had  decided  to  reduce  the  number  of 
obligatory  meetings,  and  had  reduced  the  required 
quorimi  at  those  held  during  the  months  in  which  all 
Rome  was  in  the  country,  or  during  the  vintage. 
Finally,  he  had  set  up  within  the  senate  itself  a  small 
committee  of  senators  chosen  by  lot  to  discharge  the 
current  business,  their  decisions  being  ratified  later  in 
plenary  session.     But  in  spite  of  these  expedients  the 


Struggle  between  the  Julii  and  the  Claudii  107 

senators  did  not  come,  and  any  affair  of  importance 
was  always  discharged  on  the  now  weakened  shoulders 
of  the  aged  and  weary  prince. 

The  internal  crisis  had  its  counterpart  in  an  external 
one.  Germany,  after  being  conquered,  had  been 
left  to  itself  and  no  one  seriously  thought  of  organizing 
and  consolidating  the  Roman  dominion  there.  In  the 
East,  however,  the  peace  which  had  with  such  difficulty 
been  re-established  in  the  first  years  of  the  principate 
was  again  in  peril.  In  Judeea,  after  the  death  of  King 
Herod  in  4  B.C.  the  nationalist  party  had  resumed  its 
agitation,  and  the  governor  of  Syria,  Quintilius  Varus, 
had  had  to  bring  great  forces  to  pacify  the  district. 
In  the  Parthian  empire  Phraates  who  died  in  3  B.C. 
had  been  succeeded  by  Phraataces  who,  unlike  his 
father,  had  inaugurated  an  anti-Roman  policy,  had 
occupied  Armenia,  and  had  expelled  the  monarch 
recognized  and  protected  by  Rome. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  Tiberius  hoped  that  all  these 
difficulties  would  compel  Augustus  to  recall  him  to 
Rome.  But  Augustus,  who  seems  always  to  have  had 
more  esteem  than  affection  for  Tiberius,  had  been 
much  irritated  by  his  retirement,  and  after  his  depar- 
ture had  got  into  touch  with  the  young  nobility  who 
were  against  Tiberius  and  the  traditionalists,  and  were 
trying  to  govern  the  empire  with  their  aid  and  without 
Tiberius's  help.  He  had  loaded  Caius  Cassar  with 
honours,  had  accelerated  his  career,  and  had  granted 
the  same  distinction  and  privileges  to  his  brother 
Lucius,  thus  ostentatiously  showing  that  he  considered 
these  two  youths  as  his  only  assistants  and  collabora- 
tors. The  traditionalist  party  of  which  Li  via,  Tiberius's 
mother,  seems  to  have  been  one  of  the  most  active 
members,  did  their  best  on  the  other  hand  to  combat 


io8   Struggle  for  the  Succession  of^  Augustus 

*the  growing  power  of  their  adversaries  and  to  secure 
the  recall  of  Tiberius.  All  this  led  to  intrigues,  quar- 
rels, cabals,  and  scandals  one  of  which,  in  2  B.C., 
caused  the  ruin  of  Julia.  It  appears  that  the  tradi- 
tionalist party,  seeing  that  Tiberius  would  never 
return  to  Rome  until  Julia  was  driven  out,  had  con- 
trived to  procure  proofs  of  her  adultery,  and  that  a 
member  of  the  party  denounced  her  under  the  pro- 
visions of  the  lex  de  adulteriis  which  Augustus  had 
proposed  and  passed  in  the  year  18.  By  this  law, 
when  the  husband  was  unable  or  unwilling,  the  father 
was  bound  to  punish  the  adulteress.  Tiberius,  the 
husband  in  this  case,  was  not  in  Rome  and  Augustus 
was  compelled  in  virtue  of  his  own  law  to  strike  down 
his  own  child  whom  he  banished  to  Pandateria.  In 
spite  of  this,  however,  he  did  not  reconcile  himself 
with  Tiberius,  and,  finally,  in  the  year  i  B.C.,  when  he 
decided  to  send  an  army  to  the  East  to  try  to  effect  an 
agreement  with  the  Parthians  he  gave  the  command  to 
Caius  Caesar  in  spite  of  his  youth  and  inexperience, 
and  sent  with  him  as  tutors  and  advisers  men  who 
were  bitter  enemies  to  Tiberius. 

Thus  the  fortunes  of  Tiberius  seemed  to  be  hope- 
lessly compromised  by  his  fatal  error  in  leaving 
Rome  in  6  B.C.  His  opponents,  with  Augustus  on  their 
side,  were  as  powerful  as  they  were  implacable.  It 
was  not  until  the  year  2  a.d.  that,  through  the  inter- 
cession of  Livia,  he  obtained  permission  to  return 
to  Rome,  and  then  it  was  on  condition  that  he  should 
live  in  retirement  and  lead  a  strictly  private  life.  At 
this  point,  however,  fortune,  which  had  persecuted 
him  for  eight  years,  again  ttirned  in  his  favour.  In 
this  very  year  Lucius  Cassar  fell  ill  and  died,  and  six- 
teen months  later,  at  the  beginning  of  the  year  4, 


Struggle  between  the  Julii  and  the  Claudii  109 

Caius  also  died  in  the  East  as  the  result  of  a  wound. 
These  premature  deaths  were  too  useful  to  the  cause 
of  Tiberius  not  to  be  ascribed  b}--  many  to  the  hand 
of  Livia,  but  their  suspicions  had  no  serious  founda- 
tion. Even  the  greatest  families  have  never  been 
exempt  from  paying  their  debt  to  nature  in  untimely 
deaths.  However  this  may  be,  after  the  exile  of 
Julia  the  party  opposed  to  Tiberius  lost  'the  two 
leading  figures  on  whom  they  relied.  Augustus  was 
again  left  alone  without  any  effective  assistance. 
The  oriental  situation  once  more  became  grave,  and, 
what  was  worse,  revolts  began  in  Germany.  Tiberius 's 
party  began  to  hold  up  their  heads  again,  and  openly 
demanded  the  recall  to  the  head  of  affairs  of  the 
man  who  was  the  best  general  and,  after  Augustus,  the 
most  experienced  statesman  of  his  time.  Augustus, 
however,  still  resisted,  and  finally,  when  rebellion 
broke  out  more  threateningly  than  ever  in  Germany, 
the  party  of  Tiberius  lost  all  patience  and  seems  to 
have  actually  gone  so  far  as  to  form  a  conspiracy  to 
overcome  the  obstinate  reluctance  of  the  old  man  whose 
presidential  powers  had  in  the  previous  year  been 
prolonged  for  another  ten  years.  This  was  the  famous 
conspiracy  headed  by  Cornelius  Cinna,  a  grandson  of 
Pompey.  We  do  not  know  what  its  real  aims  and 
character  were,  but  we  do  know  that  when  it  was  dis- 
covered Augustus  hastened  to  pardon  the  conspirators 
and  to  recall  Tiberius  to  the  government.  On  June 
20th  of  the  year  4  a.d.,  Augustus  adopted  him  as  his 
son  and  caused  the  comitia  to  confer  the  tribunician 
power  upon  him  for  ten  years.  The  republic,  there- 
fore, again  had  two  heads  as  it  had  had  during  the 
lifetime  of  Agrippa.  Of  these  the  younger  and  more 
active   was   a   Claudius,    the   most   uncompromising 


no  Struggle  for  the  Succession  of  Augustus 

representative  of  the  tradionalist  and  conservative 
party. 

24.  The  Government  of  Augustus  and  Tiberius 
(5-14  A.D.).  It  is  really  from  this  moment,  and  not 
from  the  death  of  Augustus,  that  the  government 
of  Tiberius,  destined  to  such  a  melancholy  celebrity, 
begins.  The  clear  proof  of  this  is  the  contrast  be- 
tween the  period  which  closes  and  that  which  begins 
at  this  point.  The  ten  years  now  commencing  saw  an 
exemplification  on  a  grandiose  scale  of  Tiberius 's 
idea  of  what  the  government  of  the  republic  ought  to 
be.  With  great  resolution  he  at  once  took  in  hand 
two  enterprises,  the  reform  of  the  army  and  the 
repression  of  the  Germanic  revolt.  The  former  of 
these  was  subordinate  to  the  latter  but  the  military 
reform  involved  a  reorganization  of  the  finances,  for 
it  was  certain  to  be  very  expensive.  Where  was  the 
necessary  money  to  be  obtained?  The  two  presidents 
formed  the  idea  of  giving  the  screw  of  the  social  laws 
another  turn,  and  of  withdrawing  from  Italy  her 
ancient  privilege  of  immunity  from  tribute.  This 
policy  had  a  moral  as  well  as  a  fiscal  significance. 
By  a  lex  Julia  caducaria  married  persons  without 
children  {orhi)  were  given  the  same  treatment  as 
unmarried  persons  and  made  liable  to  the  same  legal 
inferiority.  Moreover,  inheritances  left  to  them 
illegally  were  now  to  devolve  not  upon  the  other 
heirs  but  on  the  public  treasury.  *  Finally  the  an- 
nouncement of  a  census  of  all  citizens  possessing  more 
than  200,000  sesterces  began  to  prepare  Italy  for  a 
new  impost. 

Contemporaneously,  however,  the  army  was  rein- 

'  On  this  law  cf.  G.  Ferrero,  The  Greatness  and  Decline  of  Rome, 
vol,  v.,  p.  295. 


Government  of  Augustus  and   Tiberius   in 

forced  by  two  new  legions;'  the  old  and  expensive 
military  law  of  Augustus  was  rescinded,  and  for  it 
was  substituted  the  old  term  of  service  of  twenty 
years  for  the  legionaries  and  fourteen  for  the  praetori- 
ans, after  which  period  both  were  to  receive  a  gratuity 
in  cash  and  a  pension  for  which  a  special  fund  was 
established  (5  a.d.). 

After  this,  Tiberius,  who  had  already  made  a  pre- 
liminary tour  in  Germany,  returned  to  that  country 
having  made  up  his  mind  to  repeat  the  great  expedi- 
tion of  Drusus.  Following  the  plan  which  had  been 
settled  (and  which  was  in  substance  the  old  plan  of 
Agrippa)  the  fleet  went  down  the  Rhine  and  through 
Drusus's  canal  to  the  North  Sea,  coasted  along  the 
inhospitable  peninsula  of  Jutland,  the  ancient  seat  of 
the  Cimbri,  entered  the  estuary  of  the  Elbe  and  began 
to  ascend  that  river.  Meanwhile  the  land  army 
marched  from  the  Rhine  to  the  Elbe,  sometimes 
receiving  the  homage  of  the  peoples  through  whose 
territory  it  passed,  sometimes  fighting  and  subduing 
the  more  hostile  such  as  for  example  the  Langobardi. 
Finally  the  fleet  and  the  army  joined  hands,  and  the 
barbarians  who  had  massed  threateningly  on  the 
right  bank  of  the  river,  preferred,  in  the  face  of  so 
powerful  a  demonstration,  to  come  to  terms  with  the 
invaders. 

Tiberius  was  able  to  return  to  Rome  to  settle  the 
taxes  made  necessary  by  the  new  law  as  to  the  army. 
Nor  was  his  presence  superfluous.  Up  to  the  time 
of  his  arrival  all  attempts  to  obtain  money  had  been 
vain,  but  after  he  came  the  two  presidents  having 
paid  into  the  new  fund  170,000,000  sesterces  of  their 

'  Cf.  Pfitzner,  Ceschichte  der  romischen  Kaiserlegionen  von 
Augustus  bis  Hadrianus,  Leipzig,  1881,  p.  14. 


112  Struggle  for  the  Succession  of  Augustus 

own  money,  succeeded  in  enacting  a  law  imposing 
a  tax  of  five  per  cent,  on  property  passing  by  inherit- 
ance to  Roman  citizens,  the  proceeds  of  which  were 
to  be  paid  to  the  military  pension  fund.  This  was  an 
excellent  measure,  all  the  more  because  it  provided 
for  the  exemption  of  small  estates  and  of  legacies  to 
the  poor.  But  the  discontent  which  it  excited  among 
the  richer  classes  was  great,  and  it  was  all  directed 
at  Tiberius  who  was  known  to  be  the  real  author 
of  the  law.  Tiberius,  however,  as  usual  paid  little 
attention  to  these  murmurs  and,  early  in  the  year 
6  he  returned  to  Germany  to  carry  out  the  latter  part 
of  his  plan.  Several  years  previously  the  Marcomanni, 
in  their  flight  before  the  invasion  of  Drusus,  had  mi- 
grated into  the  modern  Bohemia  and  there,  under 
their  king,  Marbod,  had  formed  a  powerful  State  which 
had  persisted  in  refusing  to  recognize  the  Roman 
supremacy,  and  which  was  in  any  case  capable  of 
becoming  a  dangerous  centre  of  resistance  to  the 
Roman  arms.  Tiberius  wished  to  subdue  this  people 
or  to  bring  them  under  Roman  suzerainty  and 
threatened  them  with  invasion  from  two  sides — from 
the  West  across  the  country  of  the  Catti,  and  from  the 
south  across  Pannonia.  Hardly,  however,  had  this 
undertaking  been  set  on  foot  when  Tiberius  was 
informed  that  the  Pannonians  and  the  Dalmatians  had 
again  risen  in  fierce  rebellion  and  had  driven  out  the 
few  Roman  garrisons  in  the  country  together  with 
the  foreigners  who  had  already  begun  to  penetrate 
the  country  for  commercial  purposes. 

25.  Varus  meets  with  Disaster  in  Germany.  The 
Pannonian  and  Dalmatian  insiurections  were  there- 
fore a  serious  matter  enough ;  but  at  Rome  the  danger 
seemed   tremendous.     Tiberius,  however,  was  not  a 


Varus  meets  with  Disaster  in  Germany  113 

man  who  easily  lost  his  head.  He  did  not  break  off 
the  enterprise  on  which  he  was  engaged,  but  he  gave 
up  all  idea  of  conquest  and  contented  himself  with 
concluding  a  treaty  with  Marbod.  He  then  turned 
back  towards  Pannonia.  His  intention  was  not  to 
shatter  the  revolt  by  a  single  stroke  as  the  strategists 
of  the  forum  were  loudly  demanding  at  Rome,  but  in 
accordance  with  the  nature  of  the  country,  the  enemy 
and  the  forces  at  his  disposal,  to  counter  the  guerilla 
tactics  of  the  natives  with  a  guerilla  warfare  waged 
by  Roman  legionaries  drawing  their  supplies  from 
outside  the  country. 

These  tactics  led  to  the  pacification  of  Pannonia 
towards  the  end  of  the  year  8.  But  the  effort  had 
been  great.  Rome  had  had  to  enrol  veterans,  freed- 
men,  foreigners,  and,  ultimately,  slaves  taken  from 
private  persons  but  still  maintained  at  their  masters' 
charges.  Tiberius  had  had  to  stifle  the  insurrection 
in  its  own  centre  with  this  amorphous  mass  of  largely 
inferior  troops,  and  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  process 
took  some  time.  But  hardly  had  the  news  of  his 
victory  reached  Rome  and  honours  and  triumphs  were 
being  showered  upon  him,  when  most  terrible  tidings 
of  disaster  came  from  the  banks  of  the  Rhine. 

The  resolute  policy  of  Tiberius  and  his  firm  inten- 
tion, revealed  by  his  return,  to  Romanize  Germany 
had  roused  the  country.  Germany  had  found  her 
Vercingetorix  in  the  person  of  a  certain  Arminius 
who  had  been  a  friend  of  the  Roman  General  Quinti- 
lius  Varus  and  a  Roman  citizen  to  boot.  By  skilful 
manoeuvres  the  Germans  had  induced  Varus  to  ad- 
vance into  the  heart  of  the  country  and  there,  in  the 
mysterious  Teutoburg  forest,  between  the  Lippe  and 
the  Weser  (where  a  colossal  but  excessively  vulgar 

VOL.    II — 8 


114  Struggle  for  the  Succcssioji  of  Augustus 

monument  has  been  raised  in  our  time  to  commemo- 
rate not  so  much  Arminius's  exploit  as  the  triumph 
of  Germanism),  Varus  was  overwhelmed,  and  his 
legions — the  flower  of  the  Roman  army — literally 
massacred.  Varus  himself  committed  suicide  rather 
than  live  a  prisoner  in  the  hands  of  the  enemy  (Septem- 
ber or  October  9  a.d.  ')• 

26.  The  Death  of  Augustus  (14  A.D.).  The  defeat 
of  Varus  was  not  in  itself  an  irreparable  catastrophe. 
So  great  an  empire  could  lose  a  few  legions  without 
being  shaken  to  its  foundations.  Tiberius  in  fact, 
having  hurried  to  the  Rhine,  was  at  once  able  to  show 
would-be  disturbers  of  Gaul  that  if  the  Germans  were 
able  to  siurprise  and  destroy  some  Roman  garrisons 
they  could  not  presume  to  cross  the  Rhine  or  to  attack 
the  most  flourishing  provinces  of  the  empire.  But 
the  disaster  to  Varus  greatly  weakened,  if  it  did  not 
entirely  destroy,  the  purpose  of  the  Roman  govern- 
ment to  extend  its  dominions  beyond  the  Rhine  and 
the  Danube.  So,  as  Rome  had  not  the  strength  to 
cross  the  Danube  and  the  Rhine  to  subdue  the  Ger- 
mans, she  was  destined  to  see  the  day  when  the  Ger- 
mans would  themselves  cross  these  two  rivers  to  de- 
stroy the  empire!  But  neither  Augustus  nor  Tiberius 
could  see  so  far  into  the  future,  and  their  judgment 
had  to  be  guided  by  the  necessities  of  the  moment. 
In  the  light  of  these  necessities  it  seemed  prudent  not 
to  demand  too  great  an  effort  of  Italy  and  to  restrict 
the  boundaries  of  the  Western  Empire  to  the  Rhine 
and  the  Danube.     Be  this  as  it  may,  the  defeat  of 

'  On  this  catastrophe  the  most  recent  books  are  Gailly  de 
Paurines,  Les  legions  de  Varus,  Paris,  191 1,  and  W.  A.  Oldfather 
and  H.  Vernon  Canter,  The  Defeat  of  Varus  and  the  German 
Frontier  Policy  of  Augustus  in  University  of  Illinois  Studies,  1915. 


The  Death  of  Augustus  115 

Varus  was  the  last  great  sorrow  of  Augustus's  long 
life  which  was  now  drawing  to  its  close.  In  the  year 
13  the  quinquennial  powers  of  Augustus  and  Tiberius 
lapsed  and  were  renewed  once  more  and  for  the  last 
time.  In  the  following  year,  14,  Augustus  died  at 
Nola  at  the  age  of  "j"]. 

How  is  his  policy  to  be  judged?  His  plan  of 
restoring  the  aristocratic  republic  after  having,  as 
triumvir,  contributed  so  greatly  to  its  destruction, 
undoubtedly  failed.  The  republic  into  which  he 
wished  to  infuse  new  life  mummified  under  his  hands 
in  an  equivocal  and  self-contradictory  form  of  govern- 
ment which  was  at  once  feeble  and  rigid,  and  in  which 
his  own  person  and  prestige  had  become  the  principal 
prop  of  its  authority.  At  the  end  of  his  life  the  in- 
stitutions of  the  republic,  from  the  senate  to  the 
comitia  had  become  a  mere  fiction.  This  is  suffici- 
ently shown  by  the  fact  that  in  the  year  before  his 
death  the  senate  had  decided  that  twenty  of  their 
nimiber  should  be  chosen  and  that  all  decisions  taken 
by  Augustus  in  agreement  with  these  twenty  together 
with  Tiberius,  the  consuls  designate,  his  adoptive 
sons,  and  any  citizens  Augustus  might  think  proper 
to  consult,  should  have  the  force  of  senatorial  decrees! 
The  senate,  in  fact,  had  in  its  weariness  and  decadence 
abdicated  all  its  powers.  Must  it  therefore  be  con- 
cluded that  Augustus's  work  was  useless?  By  no 
means.  It  had  two  great  effects,  one  on  internal 
policy,  the  other  on  foreign  affairs.  In  Italy,  if  it  did 
not  succeed  in  reanimating  the  decrepit  body  of  the 
republic,  it  helped  to  preserve  for  another  three  cen- 
tiuies  the  principle  which  in  the  course  of  history  was 
to  be  the  great  creation  of  the  Roman  Empire  in  its 
best  days — the   principle  that   is   to   say,    that   the 


ii6  Struggle  for  the  Succession  of  Augustus 

empire  was  not,  as  in  the  case  of  the  old  monarchies, 
the  property  of  a  dynasty,  but  belonged,  one  and 
indivisible,  to  the  Roman  people.  The  government 
of  the  empire  was  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  men  and  of 
families  who  made  a  good  or  bad  use  of  their  power  for 
a  longer  or  a  shorter  time ;  but  for  several  centiiries  to 
come  it  may  be  said  that  no  man  and  no  family  could 
say  that  the  empire  was  his  or  their  chattel.  They  all 
had  to  recognize  that  the  power  entrusted  to  the 
emperor  was  a  delegation  from  the  Roman  people. 
How  important  were  the  consequences  of  this  principle 
and  how  from  it  the  Roman  senate,  which  at  the 
death  of  Augustus  seemed  mummified,  was  able  to 
draw  a  strength  which  renewed  its  youth,  will  be 
seen  in  the  subsequent  parts  of  this  history. 

In  his  foreign  policy  Augustus  had  the  great  merit 
of  reaping  the  fruits  of  the  conquest  of  Gaul  achieved 
by  Cccsar  and  of  grasping  the  fact  that  the  future  of  the 
empire  lay  more  in  the  West  than  in  the  East.  We 
have  seen  that,  up  to  the  time  of  Caesar,  Roman 
policy  looked  to  the  East,  to  Parthia,  and  aimed  at 
a  reconstitution  of  the  empire  of  Alexander.  Into 
this  abyss  Antony's  policy  and  Antony  himself  had 
plunged.  Augustus  abandoned  great  oriental  ambi- 
tions, and,  after  some  hesitation,  turned  his  forces 
resolutely  towards  the  Rhine  and  the  Danube;  he 
conquered  the  Alps,  solidly  established  the  frontiers 
of  the  empire  on  the  two  great  rivers,  and  promoted 
the  Romanization  and  the  development  of  Gaul  and 
Spain,  particularly  of  Gaul.  If  any  policy  can  be 
said  to  have  had  a  world-wide  effect  it  is  this  policy 
of  Augustus;  for  one  of  its  consequences  was  that 
Europe  entered  into  the  history  of  civilization,  hitherto 
entirely  monopolized  by  the  East  and  by  the  small 


The  Death  of  Augustus  117 

States  at  the  extreme  southern  points  of  the  European 
continent.  Moreover,  between  the  decrepit  civiHza- 
tion  of  the  East  and  the  nascent  civilization  of  the 
West,  Italy  and  Rome  managed,  thanks  to  this  policy, 
to  preserve  for  another  three  centuries  the  crown  which 
had  been  won  at  the  cost  of  so  many  wars.  It  is,  in 
fact,  clear  that  without  the  vigorous  development 
of  the  western  provinces,  and  principally  of  Gaul,  the 
centre  of  the  empire  would  have  been  displaced 
towards  the  East.  Rome  and  Italy,  as  outposts  on 
the  verge  of  barbarism  could  not  for  centuries  have 
remained,  one  the  capital  and  the  other  the  dominant 
nation  in  an  empire  whose  richest,  most  flourishing, 
and  most  populous  provinces  were  in  Asia  and  Africa. 


CHAPTER   V 

TIBERIUS'    (14-37    A.D.) 

27.  The  Election  of  Tiberius  as  Emperor  and  its 
Motives  (14  A.  D.).  On  the  death  of  Augustus,  and 
during  the  dismal  interval  before  the  senate  decided 
who  should  be  his  successor,  the  man  whose  duty  it 
was  to  carry  on  the  government  of  the  State  was  of 
course  Tiberius,  Augustus's  adopted  son  and  colleague 
in  the  empire.  This,  however,  by  no  means  neces- 
sarily signified  that  he  was  to  be  the  man  who  would 
continue  his  father's  office  and  functions  in  the  Roman 
republic.  It  was  the  expectation  of  very  many  that 
he  would  do  so,  but  others  had  in  mind  more  accept- 
able names,  and  he  himself  knew  his  fellow  citizens 

'  The  chief  source  for  the  history  of  the  government  of  Tiberius 
is  the  Annals  of  Tacitus,  which,  however,  magnificent  in  point 
of  Hterary  form,  are  less  an  impartial  history  than  a  vehement 
and  passionate  diatribe  against  the  earlier  Ctesars.  Tiberius 
has  been  much  mishandled  by  Tacitus,  but  modem  criticism 
has  now  rated  at  its  true  value  the  dark  legend  which  the  historian 
has  handed  down  as  the  true  story  of  the  second  emperor.  One 
of  the  first  to  bring  out  the  contradictions  and  improbabilities  in 
Tacitus's  account  was  the  great  French  historian  V.  Duruy  in  a 
Latin  thesis,  composed  in  1853  and  republished  with  the  author's 
Histoire  des  Romains,  Paris,  1882,  vol.  iv.,  pp.  271  ff.  There 
followed  on  the  same  lines,  Merivale,  History  of  the  Romans  under 
the  Empire,  London,  1865;  G.  B.  Sievers,  Studien  zur  Geschichte 
der  romischen  Kaiser,  Berlin,  1870;  Stahr,  Tiberius,  Leben,  Re- 

118 


The  Election  of  Tiberius  as  Emperor     1 19 

and  contemporaries  too  well,  and  was  too  well  aware 
of  his  own  character  and  of.  the  difficulties  of  the  office 
not  to  view  with  much  anxiety  the  moment  when  the 
whole  burden  of  empire  was  to  fall  on  his  shoulders. 
The  friends  and  partisans  of  Julia,  the  whole  party 
which  had  laboured  to  set  up  Caius  Cassar  against 
him,  the  classes  which  had  been  hit  by  the  social  and 
financial  legislation,  those  who  knew  him  to  be  an 
angular,  haughty,  and  uncompromising  person,  en- 
tirely wanting  in  the  indulgence  and  the  flexibility 
which  had  made  Augustus  so  popular, — all  these  could 
not  but  look  forward  with  terror  to  the.  day  when  the 
power  of  the  defunct  should  pass  to  his  surviving  col- 
league. To  govern  in  the  face  of  this  latent  and  te- 
nacious opposition  was  no  easy  matter,  and  it  is  not 
surprising  that  Tiberius  himself  hesitated  to  assume 
the  empire. 

There  was  one  circumstance,  however,  which  in- 
evitably drove  the  senate,  in  spite  of  their  reluctance, 
towards  Tiberius  and  drove  Tiberius  towards  what  he 
called  the  "untameable  monster"  of  empire.  That 
was  the  international  situation.  The  German  ques- 
tion was  not  solved  but  only  in  abeyance,  and  the  one 

gierung,  Charakter,  Berlin,  1885;  T.  Gentile,  L'Imperatore  Tiberio 
e  la  Moderne  Critica  Storica,  Milan,  i88j -.Ihrie,  Zur  Ehrenretliing 
des  Kaisers  Tiberius,  Strassburg,  1892.  The  ancient  historian  who 
best  understood  and  described  Tiberius  is  Velleius  Paterculus, 
who  has  been  unjustly  regarded  as  a  flatterer  for  his  pains. 
Velleius  had  been  an  officer  under  Tiberius's  command  and  there- 
fore knew  him  personally.  Gratitude  and  admiration  may  have 
prevented  him  from  seeing  some  of  the  defects  of  his  chief,  but 
his  judgment  is  candid,  well  weighed,  and  well  supported,  and  in 
these  qualities  forms  a  contrast  with  that  of  Tacitus  who  wrote  a 
century  later  and  relied  on  second-hand  documents  and  traditions 
which  originated  in  preconceived  animosity  and  rancour. 


I20  Tiberius 

man  who  could  take  it  up  again  and  deal  with  it  effec- 
tively was  beyond  all  doubt  the  adopted  son  of  Augus- 
tus. The  "German  question"  did  not  merely  mean 
the  war  beyond  the  Rhine.  Pannonia  and  Illyria 
were — or  remained — imminent  and  threatening  dan- 
gers for  Italy.  The  same  was  true  of  the  East.  For 
several  years  Roman  influence  in  Armenia  had  been 
going  to  pieces.  The  kings  who  were  friendly  to 
Rome  were  invariably  overthrown  and  murdered  by 
their  discontented  and  turbulent  subjects;  nor,  in 
view  of  the  quarrels  about  the  succession  in  Parthia, 
could  it  be  said  that  that  great  and  dangerous  power 
was  more  a  friend  than  an  enemy  of  the  Roman  people. 
In  Asia,  as  in  Europe,  the  empire  was  confronted  with 
grave  difficulties  of  foreign  policy.  But  the  one  ir- 
replaceable person  who  had  the  profoundest  grasp 
of  the  two  questions  was  Tiberius.  Finally  the  empire 
required  a  disciplined  army.  And  who  could  keep  the 
whole  army  to  its  discipline  better  than  Tiberius,  who 
was  the  greatest  general  of  his  time,  who  bore  the 
name  of  Caesar,  and  to  whom  after  the  long  administra- 
tion of  Augustus  the  soldiers  were  well  affected  ? 

For  these  definite  reasons,  notwithstanding  the 
sullen  hostility  of  part  of  the  senate,  and  his  own  sin- 
cere reluctance,^  the  powers  of  Augustus  were  handed 
over  to  Tiberius.  One  innovation,  however,  was  made 
which  was  intended  by  the  new  ruler  to  bring  the 
hour  of  his  liberation  nearer  and  to  free  the  electors 
from  a  pledge  which  circumstances  might  make  both 
useless  and  intolerable.  The  duration  of  the  new 
imperial  election  was  not  fixed.  Tiberius's  term  of 
office,  as  he  himself  put  it,  was  to  be  limited  by  the 

'  Cf.  Veil.  Pat.,  ii.,  124;  Tac,  Ann.,  i.,  11-13:  Dion  Cass.,  Ivii.,  2. 


First  Years  of  the  Government  of  Tiberius  I2i 

necessities  of  the  situation  and  even  more  by  the 
imminence  of  old  age.  As  always,  however,  the  new 
arrangement  was  destined  to  produce  effects  which 
were  not  intended,  and  the  imperial  dignity  which, 
as  the  senate  believed,  could  be  taken  away,  was 
henceforth  to  last  as  long  as  the  lives  of  the  men  who 
assumed  it. 

28.  The  First  Years  of  the  Government  of  Tiberius 
— their  Republican  and  Aristocratic  Character.  Tiber- 
ius was  a  traditionalist  and  an  aristocrat  who  would 
have  been  delighted  to  carry  out  a  reform  of  Rome 
comparable  to  that  of  Sulla.  The  first  acts  of  his 
reign  prove  this.  Ancient  historians,  even  those  most 
hostile  to  him,  who  have  done  most  to  establish  the 
legend  of  his  monstrous  tyranny,  tell  us  that  in  his 
early  days  he  did  nothing  without  consulting  the 
senate,  refused  all  extraordinary  titles  and  honours, 
respected  scrupulously  the  laws  of  the  republic,  and  in 
word  and  deed  showed  at  all  times  that  all  he  wanted 
to  be  was  first  among  Roman  noblemen — primus  inter 
pares.  Indeed  one  of  the  first  reforms  carried  out 
under  his  government  was  the  transfer  of  the  right  to 
appoint  magistrates  from  the  comitia  to  the  senate. 
Tiberius  did  what  Sulla  had  not  dared  to  do.  The 
people  practically  ceased  to  exist  as  an  organ  of  the 
constitution,  and  the  senate,  that  is  to  say  the  aristo- 
cracy, became  the  arbiter  of  all  the  offices  of  State. 
But  the  fact  of  the  matter  was — and  it  is  necessary  to 
grasp  this  point  if  we  are  to  understand  this  strange 
figure  and  his  still  stranger  history — that  this  Roman 
noble  of  the  old  stamp  who  wished  to  reconstitute  the 
ancient  power  of  the  aristocracy  had  to  deal  with  a 
very  different  type  of  aristocrat  from  those  of  the  older 
generations.     During    the  long  and  paternal  ascend- 


122  Tiberius 

ancy  of  Augustus,  many  of  the  great  families  had  re- 
established their  fortunes.  Others  of  more  recent 
date  had  become  illustrious.  Peace,  power,  and  se- 
curity had  fomented  in  them  the  sentiments  natural 
to  all  dominant  classes,  more  especially  those  who 
govern  by  hereditary  right — namely  pride,  a  spirit  of 
criticism  and  reciprocal  jealousy,  together  with  a 
proneness  to  discord  and  litigation.  The  Roman 
nobility  had  respected  Augustus,  though  they  felt 
that  he  had  ruled  long  enough,  but  Tiberius  could  not 
hope  for  a  similarly  benevolent  attitude.  He  lacked 
the  prestige  assured  to  Augustus  by  long  years  of  rule, 
by  his  re-establishment  of  peace  in  the  empire  and  the 
salvation  which  he  had  seemed  to  bring  to  Rome  in 
her  hour  of  danger.  Nay,  precisely  because  he  himself 
proposed  not  to  be,  and  not  to  wish  to  be,  considered 
more  than  one  noble  among  the  rest,  his  peers  thought 
themselves  entitled  to  criticize  and  scan  narrowly  his 
every  word  and  deed,  to  see  in  every  exercise  of  his 
supreme  authority  an  abuse  of  power,  a  manifestation 
of  secret  ambition,  of  crooked  plans,  of  acts  contrary 
to  the  public  good  and  to  the  spirit  of  the  republican 
constitution.'  Their  acrimony  was  all  the  greater  as 
they  were  all  compelled  to  recognize  that  this  supreme 
authority  was  a  necessity.  From  the  moment  of 
Augustus's  death  there  arose  among  the  Roman  no- 
bility a  kind  of  latent  and  implacable  opposition  to  the 
supreme  power  of  the  princeps,  which  was  the  last 
desperate  protest  of  aristocratic  pride  against  the 
historic  necessity  which  was  throwing  all  things  in 

'  Cf.  the  passage  of  Tacitus  {Ann.,  i.,  75)  which  is  practically  an 
admission  of  this:  multaque  eo  coram  adversus  ambitum  el  poten- 
tiutn  preces  cotistituta;  sed,  dum  veritati  consulitur,  libertas  cor- 
rumpebatur, 


First  Years  of  the  Government  of  Tiberius   123 

Rome  into  the  hands  of  a  single  family.  But,  though 
the  aristocracy  looked  askance  and  with  ill-concealed 
jealousy  on  the  princeps  and  his  power  now  that 
Augustus  was  gone,  they  were  none  the  more  willing 
to  second  his  endeavours  to  revive  the  ancient  repub- 
lican institutions,  which  would  have  been  the  best 
way  of  making  the  new  supreme  office  merely  transi- 
tory as  they  all  still  hoped  it  was  to  be.  The  tradition 
whereby  the  great  Roman  families  had  for  centuries 
been  regarded  as  schools  of  generals  and  statesmen  was 
too  much  weakened  by  the  force  of  circumstances,  by 
new  needs  and  customs  and  also  by  new  ideas.  A 
system  of  moral  philosophy — Stoicism — was  beginning 
to  spread  among  the  Roman  upper  classes  which 
taught  that  the  truly  happy  man  is  not  the  King  of 
Persia  with  all  his  treasures  but  he  whose  conscience 
is  free ;  which  affirmed  that  the  individual  was  in  sub- 
jection to  no  earthly  power  but  only  to  God;  which 
encouraged  men  to  judge  the  great  exactly  in  the  same 
wa}"  as  the  rest  of  mankind,  and  declared  it  not  only  a 
right  but  sometimes  a  duty  to  rebel  against  the  orders 
of  the  prince;  which  inculcated  that  exile,  death,  and 
misfortune  might  be  accepted  with  as  much  satisfaction 
as  honours  and  riches,  and  that  there  was  no  punish- 
ment on  earth  more  terrible  than  the  condemnation  of 
one's  own  conscience.  This  doctrine,  which  set  the 
individual  conscience  above  all  exterior  authority, 
produced  heroes  under  the  principate  and  covered 
with  a  superb  mantle  of  moral  beauty  many  things 
which  in  themselves  were  of  small  account.  At  the 
same  time,  however,  it  was  destined  to  be  a  serious 
embarrassment  both  to  the  new  imperial  regime  and 
to  the  restoration  of  the  old  aristocratic  republic. 
The  princeps  who,  as  Tiberius  was  soon  to  learn  by 


124  Tiberius 

experience,  had  ceased  to  possess  the  influence  en- 
joyed by  Augustus,  could  not  fail  to  irritate  the  aris- 
tocracy, whether  by  his  efforts  to  restore  the  ancient 
constitution  by  overcoming  aristocratic  selfishness,  or 
by  actions  at  variance  with  the  spirit  of  the  con- 
stitution to  which  he  was  compelled  to  resort  by  the 
decadence  of  old  institutions  produced  by  the  growing 
apathy  of  the  nobility.  What  was  still  worse,  this 
perennial  discontent  would  not  dare  to  show  itself  in 
open  and  resolute  opposition — for  no  one  seriously 
thought  of  overthrowing  the  principate, — but  in  a 
kind  of  perpetual  and  insistent  fronde,  dividing  the 
senate  into  a  number  of  bitterly  hostile  groups.  These 
inevitably  tried  to  exploit  the  quarrels  within  the 
family  of  the  princeps,  and  in  the  senate  and  in  the 
presence  of  the  army  and  the  people,  to  oppose  to  his 
person  and  his  policy  that  of  some  other  member  of 
his  family.  Nee  totam  servitiUem  pati  possunt  nee 
totam  liheratatem — the  Tacitean  epigram'  describes 
this  state  of  mind  with  admirable  lucidity. 

Thus  the  act  whereby  Tiberius  transferred  from  the 
people  to  the  senate  the  right  to  elect  the  magistrates 
of  the  republic,  does  not  seem  to  have  earned  for  the 
new  princeps  any  particular  gratitude  from  the  senate, 
where  he  had  many  enemies  dating  from  the  days  of 
Rhodes.  Moreover,  Tiberius,  in  passing  this  reform 
had  not  aimed  at  the  gratification  of  the  senate  but  at 
the  good  of  the  State.  The  comitia  during  the  pre- 
vious twenty-five  years  had  been  scenes  of  disorder, 
tumult,  faction  fighting,  and  corruption.  Augustus, 
with  all  his  influence  and  with  his  power  of  recommend- 
ing selected  candidates,  had  had  the  greatest  difficulty 
in  keeping  them  in  order.     Tiberius,  who  wished  the 

•  Tacit.,  Hist.,  i.,  i6. 


Tlie  War  of  Revenge  in  Germany      125 

magistrates  to  be  competent  and  honest,  handed  over 
the  elections  to  a  safer  body  in  which  the  prince 
could  more  easily  exercise  the  right  of  commendatio 
which  throughout  his  life  he  was  to  use  with  impartial- 
ity and  entire  self  abnegation.  It  is  not  improbable, 
on  the  other  hand,  that  the  lower  classes  received  with 
little  favour  this  serious  diminution  of  their  privileges 
which  had  been  consecrated  by  centuries,  and  that 
Tiberius  had  to  describe  it  as  the  pious  accomplish- 
ment of  a  plan  conceived  by  Augustus.^  However 
this  may  be,  the  senate,  after  this  reform,  found  itself 
during  the  first  two  years  of  the  principate  of  Tiberius, 
stronger  perhaps  than  it  had  ever  been  since  the  time 
of  Sulla,  both  because  its  powers  had  been  notably 
increased  and  because  the  new  prince,  feeling  his  au- 
thority to  be  weak,  and  anxious  about  the  responsibili- 
ties which  weighed  upon  him,  asked  for  nothing  better 
than  that  the  great  council  should  act  with  all  the 
authority  that  law  and  tradition  allowed  to  it.  But  out 
of  this  situation,  so  favourable  to  its  pretentions,  the 
senate  could  make  nothing  better  than  a  stupid  and 
violent  quarrel,  in  which  the  authority  of  the  princeps 
and  its  own  were  alike  weakened. 

29.  The  War  of  Revenge  in  Germany  (14-16  A.D.). 
This  did  not  happen  at  once,  however,  for  the 
two  first  years,  which  were  years  of  transition,  were 
prosperous  enough.  Foreign  troubles,  moreover, 
were  the  chief  preoccupation  of  this  period.  Im- 
mediately after  the  death  of  Augustus  the  legions  of 
Pannonia  and  Germany  mutinied,  demanding  pay  at 
the  rate  of  a  denarius  per  day,  instead  of  ten  asses  as 
heretofore,  ten  years'  service,  and  the  punctual  pay- 
ment of  pensions.     This  grave  revolt  was  subdued 

I  Veil.  Pat.,  ii.,  124. 


126  Tiberius 

partly  by  concessions  and  partly  by  severity,  and 
thereafter  (if  we  are  to  believe  many  ancient  and 
modern  historians),  Germanicus,  son  of  the  ill-fated 
Drusus  (and  therefore  nephew  of  Tiberius)  who  was 
in  chief  command  of  the  legions  in  Germany,  led  them 
across  the  Rhine  to  wage  a  war  of  revenge  against  the 
Germans.  According  to  this  account  this  youth  of 
twenty-five,  as  the  sequel  to  a  military  rebellion,  took 
it  upon  himself  to  decide  on  a  new  adventure  into  that 
mysterious  Germany  which  had  been  the  grave  of  his 
father  and  of  Varus,  in  order  that  his  legions  might  be 
led  out  of  temptation !  This  explanation  is  improbable, 
for  what  he  was  attempting  was  no  mere  raid  of  brief 
duration  but  a  dangerous  expedition  which  lasted 
nearly  three  years  and  involved  enormous  expense  to 
the  imperial  treasury  as  well  as  a  new  levy  which  fell 
on  the  provinces. 

The  true  reason  was  different  and  by  no  means  diffi- 
cult to  conjecture.  The  German  expedition  five  years 
previously  had  been  suspended  but  not  finally  aban- 
doned. It  is  probable  that  Augustus  himself  had  not 
renounced  the  hope  of  reconquering  the  country  some 
day  when  the  memory  of  the  disaster  had  faded  into 
the  past,  when  Italy  had  overcome  her  reluctance  to 
undergo  new  sacrifices  and  a  favourable  opportunity 
presented  itself.  All  these  conditions  were  now  ful- 
filled. Arminius  at  the  head  of  the  warlike  Cherusci 
was  fighting  his  father-in-law  and  rival  Segestes  who 
implored  the  aid  of  the  Roman  legions.  On  the  other 
hand  the  election  of  Tiberius  was  primarily  due  to  the 
dangers  of  the  external  situation  of  the  empire  and  to 
his  own  military  qualities,  and  it  was  natural  that  he 
should  desire  to  bring  to  a  happy  consummation  a 
task  which  had  been  very  near  to  the  heart  of  Augustus. 


The  War  of  Revenge  in  Germany      127 

Moreover,  was  not  continuous  military  expansion  an 
essential  part  of  the  policy  of  the  republic?  To  these 
considerations  were  of  course  added  the  aspirations 
and  personal  ambitions  which  were  more  than  legiti- 
mate in  a  young  man  like  Germanicus.  We  must 
therefore  think  of  this  resumption  of  the  German  cam- 
paign as  initiated  by  the  common  intention  of  the 
prince  and  the  young  commander-in-chief  of  the  armies 
of  the  Rhine  and  carried  out  in  accordance  with  a  plan 
previously  settled  by  them  in  concert. 

Germanicus,  who  had  begun  hostilities  towards  the 
end  of  the  year  14  by  ravaging  and  burning  the  coun- 
try of  the  Marsi  (between  the  rivers  Ruhr  and  Lippe), 
now,  several  months  later,  made  a  new  thrust  into 
Germany,  crossed  the  territories  of  the  Catti,  entered 
those  of  the  Cherusci  further  to  the  north,  hberated 
Segestes  and  captured  a  great  number  of  prisoners 
among  whom  was  Tusnelda  herself,  the  wife  of  Armin- 
lus  then  pregnant  with  a  boy — a  precious  hostage. 
After  this,  he  commenced  his  great  expedition,  resum- 
ing the  plan  conceived  by  Agrippa  and  followed  by 
Drusus.  Germany  was  again  invaded,  partly  by  land 
and  partly  by  water,  by  a  force  sent  up  the  Ems, 
in  such  a  way  that  the  enemy  was  both  attacked  in 
front  and  taken  in  reverse.  These  operations  were 
successfully  carried  out.  The  Germanic  tribes  which 
did  not  submit  were  beaten  as  in  the  case  of  the  Bruc- 
teri,  and  Germanicus  was  able  to  clear  a  way  to  the 
Teutoburg  forest,  the  scene  of  the  massacre  of  Varus's 
army  six  years  before.  There  were  found  the  battered 
remains  of  the  last  position  occupied  by  the  Romans, 
the  bones  of  slain  men  and  animals  whitened  by  time, 
confused  heaps  of  weapons  and  human  skulls  hanging 
from  the  trees.     Germanicus  and  his  troops  raised  a 


128  Tiberius 

mound  in  pious  memory  of  the  slain,  so  that  their 
bones,  now  avenged,  might  at  least  find  a  permanent 
resting  place  secure  from  wind  and  rain.     But  there 
was  little  time  for  delay.     Arminius  reappeared  on 
the  flank  of  the  Romans,  always  present  and  always 
out  of  reach,  endeavouring  to  repeat  once  again  the 
blow  which  had  fallen  at  Teutoburg,  and  winter  was  at 
hand.     Germanicus,  though  he  had  not  won  a  decisive 
success,   decided    to  return.     He    himself  with    four 
legions  was  to  descend  the  course  of  the  Ems,  partly 
by  water  and  partly  by  land  in  order  not  to  overload 
the  ships.     The  other  half  of  his  army,  amounting  to 
another  four  legions,  under  the  command  of  his  cour- 
ageous lieutenant  Aulus  Cascina  was  to  regain  the 
Rhine  by  land,  following  the  road  called  the  Pontes 
Longi  built  on  embankments  and  piles,  which,  sixteen 
years  before  had  been  driven  through  the  vast  marsh- 
land then  extending  from  the  Ems  to  the  Rhine.     But 
while  the  legions  of  Germanicus  marching  by  land 
towards  the  estuary  of  the  Ems  were  caught  and 
severely  damaged  by  one  of  the  terrible  tides  prevalent 
in  the  North  Sea  at  that  time  of  year,  the  land  army 
under  the  orders  of  Cscina  reached  Castra  Vetera 
after  a  narrow  escape  which  they  owed  entirely  to  the 
imprudence  of  the  enemy,  the  intrepidity  of  the  gen- 
eral, and  the  valour  of  the  soldiers  intensified  by  the 
memory  of  Varus  to  a  desperate  courage  (autimm  15). 
The  cost   of  the   campaign,   therefore,   had   been 
greater  than  its  achievement,  but  neither  Germanicus 
nor  Tiberius  regarded  this  as  a  sufficient  reason  for 
giving  up  the  war.     A  larger  force  was  necessary  and 
this  was  to  have  been  provided  in  the  following  year. 
The  plan  for  this  new  invasion  of  Germany  was  some- 
what difiFerent  from  its  predecessors.     The  dangers  of 


The  War  of  Revenge  in  Germany      129 

Caecina's  retreat  had  been  too  serious  for  the  com- 
mander-in-chief to  risk  them  a  second  time.  To 
invade  by  water  was  no  doubt  the  best  plan,  and 
therefore  the  winter  of  the  years  15  and  16  was  devoted 
not  only  to  increasing  by  new  levies  the  forces  which 
were  guarding  the  Rhine  but  also  to  increasing  the 
fleet.  A  thousand  vessels  and  eight  legions,  in  addi- 
tion to  a  great  number  of  auxiliaries,  were  prepared  in 
the  spring  of  16.  Germanicus,  after  securing  the  line 
of  the  Lippe  against  possible  incursions  by  the  enemy, 
led  his  great  army  by  sea  to  the  mouth  of  the  Ems, 
and,  disembarking  on  the  banks  of  the  river,  moved  in 
the  direction  of  the  Weser  against  the  enemy  whose 
force  was  this  time  not  wholly  composed  of  Cheruscans 
but  of  troops  representing  several  Germanic  tribes. 
He  pitched  his  camp  on  the  banks  of  the  Weser,  crossed 
the  river,  and,  on  the  plain  of  Idistavisto,  probably 
not  far  from  Minden,  where  the  Weser  makes  a  sudden 
bend  to  the  left  in  the  middle  of  its  course,  he  discov- 
ered the  enemy  and  inflicted  on  him  a  severe  defeat. 
Arminius  himself  escaped  from  the  field,  disguising 
his  well-known  features  with  the  blood  of  his  own 
wounds.  Shortly  afterwards  he  in  vain  tried  once 
more  the  fortune  of  arms,  hoping  to  intercept  the 
Romans  on  their  return  journey  and  so  to  raise  the  for- 
tunes of  his  people.  Arminius  had  repeated  the  error 
of  Vercingetorix  and  of  all  barbarian  armies  flushed 
with  the  pride  of  an  initial  success  by  abandoning 
the  guerilla  tactics  which  had  proved  so  effective 
and  by  risking  a  pitched  battle,  and  the  second  en- 
counter resulted  in  a  second  and  even  more  serious 
defeat  for  the  Cherusci. 

To  all  appearance  Germany  was  again  subdued,  and 
for  the  moment  it  was  possible  to  make  the  return 

VOL.    II — 9 


1 30  Tiberius 

march  through  a  terror  stricken  country.  Germanicus 
decided  that  on  this  occasion  he  would  not  put  him- 
self at  the  mercy  of  the  tides  which  were  Hkely  to  be 
more  dangerous  than  ever  owing  to  the  approach  of  the 
equinox.  He  therefore  sent  away  a  good  part  of  his 
army  by  land  while  he  himself  with  the  remainder 
rejoined  the  fleet  which  awaited  him  at  the  mouth  of 
the  Ems.  The  unpleasant  experience  of  the  previous 
year,  however,  was  destined  to  be  as  nothing  compared 
with  the  trials  which  now  awaited  the  thousand  ships 
of  Germanicus.  It  was  not  the  tide  this  time  but  a 
storm  which  dispersed  and  sank  these  small  vessels 
which  were  assuredly  not  intended  to  sustain  so  rough 
a  shock.  Many  men  and  horses  were  engulfed  for 
ever  in  the  depths  of  the  German  ocean.  Others  were 
cast  away  far  and  near  on  the  northern  coasts,  and  it 
was  long  before  Germanicus,  who  had  gone  to  the 
country  of  the  Cauci,  coidd  collect  the  siurvivors  and 
restmie  his  return  journey.  This  new  disaster  had  had 
its  effect  in  Germany.  The  country  again  flew  to  arms 
and  all  the  sacrifices  of  the  campaign  were  in  danger  of 
having  been  made  in  vain. 

A  new  and  violent  campaign  against  the  incorrigi- 
ble Cherusci  and  an  expedition  against  the  Marsi,  who 
lived  between  the  upper  Lippe  and  the  upper  Ruhr, 
were  necessary  before  the  weary  Roman  legions  could 
finally  retire  to  the  winter  quarters  for  which  they 
longed  and  which  they  had  so  hardly  earned. 

30.  The  German  Policy  of  Tiberius.  Germanicus 
had  carried  out  in  Germany  some  of  the  finest  cam- 
paigns in  the  military  history  of  Rome.  In  particular 
the  expedition  of  the  year  16  by  reason  of  the  number 
of  troops  involved,  the  great  scale  of  the  preparations, 
the   difficulties   overcome,    the   enormous   extent   of 


The  German  Policy  of  Tiberius         131 

territory  covered,  and  the  victories  that  were  won,  was 
undoubtedly  one  of  the  greatest  military  undertakings 
in  ancient  history.  It  proves  that  the  military  power 
of  the  empire  was  still  very  great.  Teutoburg  was 
avenged,  but  could  Germany  be  said  to  be  conquered? 
For  Germanicus  and  for  the  whole  court  of  friends  and 
flatterers  who  surrounded  the  young  general,  now  re- 
garded by  most  people  as  the  colleague  and  successor 
if  not  actually  the  rival  of  Tiberius,  there  could  be  no 
doubt  about  it.  A  little  more  persistence  and  Rome 
would  conquer  another  vast  province  in  the  West. 
Tiberius,  however,  was  of  a  different  opinion.  These 
expeditions  to  Germany  demanded  great  armies,  great 
sacrifices  of  men,  and  enormous  expenditure  The 
enemy  was  brave,  obstinate,  and  mobile,  and  easily 
recovered  from  every  defeat,  while  his  country  was 
poor  and  sparsely  populated  This  being  so  was  the 
game  really  worth  the  candle?  Would  it  not  perhaps 
be  better  to  abandon  the  country  to  its  present  in- 
habitants and  to  rule  it  indirectly  by  holding  the 
balance  of  its  fierce  internal  struggles  which  could  be 
kept  permanently  inflamed  by  the  manifold  resources 
of  diplomacy?  Would  it  not  be  better  to  protect 
Gaul,  a  very  much  more  valuable  country,  by  strength- 
ening the  frontiers  of  the  province  rather  than  by 
conquering  Germany?  Tiberius  accordingly  aban- 
doned the  idea  of  adding  a  new  and  vast  province 
to  the  Western  Empire.  He  decided,  now  that  the 
prestige  of  the  Roman  arms  had  been  re-established 
by  the  expeditions  of  Germanicus,  to  evacuate  Ger- 
many ;  he  separated  the  military  command  of  the  line 
of  the  Rhine  from  the  government  of  the  Gallic  pro- 
vinces; divided  theCelto-germanic  Rhine  country  into 
two  districts — provinces  in  name  rather  than  in  fact — 


132  Tiberius 

under  the  names  of  Upper  and  Lower  Germany; 
charged  his  son,  who  also  bore  the  name  of  Drusus,  to 
keep  an  eye  on  Germanic  affairs  from  Pannonia;and 
directed  Germanicus  to  return  to  Rome  to  celebrate 
his  triumph. 

Thus  in  the  West  also  Tiberius  followed  the  policy 
of  caution  and  patience,  more  ready  to  use  diplomacy 
than  arms,  which  was  one  of  the  oldest  traditions  of  the 
Roman  aristocracy.  The  aristocracy  of  his  own  time, 
however,  which  recollected  its  traditions  only  when 
they  served  to  satisfy  its  rancour,  showed  him  no 
gratitude  for  this.  The  abandonment  of  Germany, 
on  the  contrary,  aroused  discontent  at  Rome,  especi- 
ally among  the  nobility;  and  in  this  they  found  their 
first  pretext  for  venting  their  latent  ill-will  against 
Tiberius.  It  was  whispered  that  Tiberius  had  recalled 
Germanicus  because  he  was  jealous  of  his  successes, 
and,  in  order  to  spite  the  princeps,  his  nephew  was 
overwhelmed  with  admiration  and  praise.  Other 
causes  contributed  to  increase  public  discontent. 
Tiberius's  method  of  adminstering  the  empire,  which 
was  gradually  growing  firmer,  was  not  calculated  to 
win  him  the  sympathies  of  the  majority  whether  of  the 
upper  or  the  lower  classes.  This  system,  to  which  he 
adhered  until  the  end  of  his  life,  consisted  in  an  en- 
deavotir  to  ameliorate  the  public  and  private  life  of 
his  time  not  by  passing  far-reaching  laws  but  by  daily 
good  government,  of  which  the  life  and  conduct  of  the 
prince  were  to  be  the  first  and  most  brilliant  example. 
The  law  was  to  be  respected  at  any  cost  and  was  to  be 
equal  for  all,  whether  the  case  affected  the  lowest  of 
the  citizens  or  the  dearest  friends  and  relations  of  the 
prince.  Impartiality  was  to  be  the  first  principle  in 
administration  and   in   courts   of  justice.     Manners 


The  German  Policy  of  Tiberius         133 

were  to  be  purified  and  made  more  austere,  and  to  this 
end  were  to  be  abolished  all  the  noisy  popular  festivi- 
ties which  characterized  the  last  days  of  the  republican 
period,  in  which  the  great  had  delighted  to  mingle, 
and  towards  which  even  Augustus  had  shown  some 
indulgence.  There  was,  therefore,  no  longer  to  be  a 
superabundance  of  public  games  with  the  idleness 
which  they  brought  in  their  train;  there  were  to  be 
no  more  largesses  to  play  actors.  Clamorous  demon- 
strations were  no  longer  allowed  in  the  theatres  nor 
were  any  spectacles  permitted  which  coiild  in  any 
way  injure  public  morals.  In  compensation  the 
finances  were  to  be  administered  with  firmness  but 
without  parsimony,  especially  when  it  was  a  question 
of  the  real  and  proper  needs  of  the  State.  Agriculture, 
particularly  the  production  of  such  necessaries  of  life 
as  grain,  was  encouraged  in  every  possible  way. 
Rome  and  Italy  were  urged  to  make  every  effort  not 
to  depend  on  the  provinces  for  bread.  The  luxury  of 
the  upper  classes,  above  all  the  importation  of  gems 
and  costly  fabrics  from  the  far  East  (India  and  China) 
was  discouraged  as  far  as  possible  as  being  morally 
and  financially  calamitous.  At  the  same  time  Tibe- 
rius's  policy  did  what  was  possible  to  secure  the  safety 
of  villages  and  country  districts.  His  firmness  and 
authority  restored  in  the  armies  the  discipline  which 
had  been  so  seriously  shaken  at  the  time  of  his  acces- 
sion. His  sense  of  justice,  his  wisdom  in  the  choice  of 
governors,  and  his  severity  in  dealing  with  them  com- 
pelled a  proper  treatment  of  the  provinces.  He  was 
never  tired  of  reminding  his  governors  that  a  good 
shepherd  may  shear  but  should  never  flay  his  flock. 
He  ruled,  in  short,  like  a  Roman  noble  of  the  old 
school,  gifted  with  intelligence  and  public  spirit,  with 


134  Tiberius 

dignity  and  firmness ;  but  the  people  began  to  grumble 
that  the  prince  was  "mean,"  the  nobles  that  he  was 
harsh  and  tyrannical,  and  everybody  turned  to  Ger- 
manicus,  attributing  to  him  all  the  virtues  opposed 
to  the  vices  which,  rightly  or  wrongly,  they  saw  in 
Tiberius. 

31.  The  Mission  of  Germanicus  to  the  East  (17-19 
A.D.) .  Meanwhile  Germanicus  had  returned  to  Rome 
where,  in  the  month  of  May,  17,  he  celebrated  one  of 
the  greatest  triumphs  that  the  history  of  the  Roman 
republic  had  ever  seen.  So  little  truth  was  there  in 
the  accusations  of  jealousy  against  Tiberius!  Shortly 
afterwards  he  was  sent  to  the  East  on  a  mission  at  the 
same  time  important  and  honourable.  New  political 
complications  there  required  the  presence  of  an  ener- 
getic and  capable  person  who  enjoyed  the  full  confi- 
dence of  the  prince.  The  Parthians  had  driven  out 
their  king,  Vonones,  who  was  favourable  to  the  Romans 
and  had  substituted  for  him  Artabanus,  a  warlike  per- 
son whose  manners  and  sentiments  were  more  nation- 
alist in  character.  The  change  in  Parthia  had  reacted 
on  Armenia.  There  Vonones  on  his  expulsion  from 
Parthia,  had  at  first  succeeded  in  getting  himself  pro- 
claimed king  but  had  finally  been  forced  to  fly  before 
the  threats  of  Artabanus.  Thus  the  Influence  of 
Parthia  had  begun  to  predominate  in  Armenia.  Fur- 
thermore Cappadocia  had  lately  been  annexed  to  the 
empire  and  required  to  be  organized.  Anatolia  the 
independent  part  of  Cllicia,  and  Commagene,  a  new 
kingdom  composed  of  parts  of  Cappadocia  and  Syria, 
had  lost  their  kings.  Both  were  under  Roman  suzer- 
ainty and  were  now  a  prey  to  internal  quarrels  which 
necessarily  concerned  Rome.  Syria  and  Judaea  were 
protesting  against  the  burden  of  the  tribute.     All  this 


The  Mission  of  Germanicus  to  the  East   135 

necessitated  the  presence  of  a  trusted  envoy  who  would 
study  the  many  problems  on  the  spot  and  would  put 
them  in  the  way  of  the  solution  which  was  best  for 
Roman  interests.  Tiberius  wished  Germanicus  to  be 
this  envoy.  A  decree  of  the  senate  invested  him  with 
the  governorship  of  the  oriental  provinces  but  with 
an  authority  {imperium  mains)  superior  to  that  of 
all  Roman  governors  whether  senatorial  or  imperial 
(17  A.D.). 

If,  however,  Tiberius  prized  highly  many  of  Ger- 
manicus's  qualities  he  believed  that  some  of  his  other 
characteristics  required  to  be  moderated  and  curbed. 
In  the  East  it  was  no  mere  question  of  fighting  bar- 
barians as  it  had  been  in  Germany;  it  would  also,  and 
above  all,  be  necessary  to  manage  with  the  finest  arts 
of  diplomacy  peoples  of  ancient  civilization  and  courts 
proficient  in  every  kind  of  intrigue.  An  older  and 
more  experienced  man  could  be  of  the  greatest  assist- 
ance to  Germanicus.  In  agreement  with  the  senate, 
therefore,  and  perhaps  at  the  senate's  suggestion, 
he  sent  out  as  governor  of  Syria  a  man  from  whose 
voluntary  co-operation  with  Germanicus  he  had  every 
reason  to  expect  good  results.  No  one  at  this  time 
could  have  said  that  he  was  sending  a  favourite,  a 
secret  agent  or  even  a  personal  friend.  On.  Calpur- 
nius  Piso  on  v/hom  his  choice  had  fallen  was  the  de- 
scendant of  one  of  the  most  illustrious  families  of  the 
Reman  aristocracy,  the  son  of  a  man  who  sixty  years 
before  had  taken  the  side  of  the  Pompeians  against 
Caesar,  and  had  applauded  the  murder  of  the  dictator 
on  the  Ides  of  March.  Piso  was  proud  of  his  ancestry, 
and,  some  time  before,  had  raised  a  question  in  the 
senate  which  above  all  others  was  calculated  to  affirm 
the  rights  of  the  senate  as  against  those  of  the  princeps. 


136  Tiberius 

He  had  affirmed — and  had  invited  the  senate  to 
discuss — the  right  of  that  assembly  to  meet  for  its  ordi- 
nary deliberations  and  for  the  despatch  of  public  busi- 
ness even  in  the  absence  of  the  princeps  who  usually 
presided.  Thus,  in  choosing  or  accepting  the  choice 
of  this  man  as  the  counsellor  and  guide  of  Germanicus, 
Tiberius  was  certainly  not  consulting  his  own  personal 
interests  but  those  of  the  empire.  In  any  case  he 
wished  to  show  his  respect  and  deference  for  the 
ancient  aristocracy  by  placing  Germanicus,  his  young 
nephew,  his  probable  successor  and  the  hope  of  the 
Empire,  under  the  tutelage  of  one  of  the  most  authen- 
tic and  noble  families  of  Rome.  And  yet,  by  a  dis- 
astrous concatenation  of  events,  the  most  terrible 
consequences  were  destined  to  flow  from  an  act  the 
motives  of  which  were  so  reasonable  and  unexcep- 
tionable. 

Germanicus  first  went  to  Greece,  and  after  making 
some  stays  at  Athens,  proceeded  to  Euboea  whence, 
via  Lesbos  and  Thrace,  he  crossed  to  Asia  Minor  and 
there  eagerly  devoted  himself  to  the  settlement  of  the 
intricate  affairs  of  the  East.  On  the  throne  of  Ar- 
menia he  placed  Zeno,  son  of  Polemon,  king  of  Pontus, 
who  took  the  Armenian  name  of  Artaxes.  He  was  a 
prince  friendly  to  Rome  and,  through  his  mother,  re- 
lated to  the  Imperial  house  ;^  but  in  the  eyes  of 
orientals  he  had  also  the  advantage  of  having  remained 
by  custom  and  inclination  an  oriental  himself.  Cap- 
padocia,  Cilicia,  and  Commagene  were  annexed  to 
Syria.     Finally,  the  effect  of  Germanicus's  presence 

'  He  was  a  grandson  of  Antonia,  daughter  of  the  triumvir 
Mark  Antony.  Cf.  Epheni.  Epigr.,  i.,  270;  and  V.  Strazzulla, 
La  famiglia  di  Pithodoris  regina  del  Ponto  in  Bessarione,  190 1,  pp. 
80  ff. 


The  Mission  of  Germanicus  to  the  Exist  137 

and  the  fame  of  his  exploits  and  good  fortune  spread  so 
rapidly  that  Artabanus,  the  new  king  of  Parthia,  sought 
an  interview  with  him  and  promised  to  renew  the 
alliance,  provided  that  Rome  did  not  contest  his  sover- 
eignty in  the  name  of  the  rights  of  Vonones.  Ger- 
manicus next  proceeded  to  Egypt  where  he  intended  to 
travel  without  guards  and  dressed  after  the  easy 
fashion  of  the  oriental  Greeks,  rather  as  a  private  per- 
son than  in  the  character  of  the  imperial  representative. 
These  many-sided  activities,  however,  soon  gave 
rise  to  differences  with  Piso  which  rapidly  grew  more 
acute.  We  cannot  say  exactly  what  were  the  real 
causes  of  the  quarrel  or  v/ho  was  In  the  wrong.  Per- 
haps Piso,  who  hardly  admitted  the  superiority  of 
Tiberius  himself,  thought  that,  as  a  Roman  of  ancient 
senatorial  family,  he  had  the  right  to  impose  his  will 
on  one  whom  he  considered  as  after  all  only  an  Inex- 
perienced youth  and  merely  an  emissary  of  the  prln- 
ceps.  Perhaps  Germanicus,  being  a  spoilt  young  man 
proud  of  his  own  merits  and  his  own  origin,  committed 
some  imprudence  and  thought  that  he  could  transgress 
the  methods  and  traditions  of  Roman  governors  or  even 
the  law  itself,  as  he  undoubtedly  did  when  he  went  to 
Egypt  without  the  imperial  sanction,  and  also  when, 
to  remedy  a  famine  in  that  country,  he  distributed  to 
the  people  the  contents  of  the  imperial  granaries  re- 
served for  the  use  of  Italy.  It  may  also  be  that  the 
two  men  held  different  views  on  some  of  the  great 
poHtical  problems  of  the  East.  It  appears,  indeed, 
that  Piso  did  not  wish  to  throw  over  the  old  king  of 
Parthia,  Vonones,  as  Germanicus  had  done.  In  order 
to  secure  the  friendship  of  Artabanus.  "Whatever 
may  be  the  truth  of  all  this,  the  fact  remains  that 
before  long  there  was  a  rupture  between  Germanicus 


138  Tiberius 

and  Piso  and,  what  was  more  serious,  because  it  now 
happened  for  the  first  time  at  any  rate  openly,  not 
only  between  them  but  between  their  respective  wives. 
Germanicus  had  gone  to  the  East,  as  he  had  gone  to 
Germany,  accompanied  by  his  beloved  consort  Agrip- 
pina,  the  daughter  of  Julia  and  Agrippa,  who  had  never 
been  able  to  forget  that  her  mother's  exile  was  largely 
due  to  Tiberius  and  Livia.  The  wife  of  Piso,  who  had 
also  accompanied  her  husband  to  the  East,  was 
Plancina,  a  very  close  friend  of  Livia,  the  mother  of 
Tiberius.  The  presence  and  the  quarrel  of  the  two 
ladies  profoundly  aggravated  the  dissensions  of  Ger- 
manicus and  Piso.  When  Germanicus  returned  from 
Egypt  he  not  only  found  letters  from  Tiberius  reprov- 
ing him  for  transgressing  the  imperial  order  to  which 
he  owed  obedience  by  going  there,  but  also  discovered 
that  many  of  his  directions  had  been  cancelled  by 
Piso,  that  the  loyalty  of  the  troops  to  him  had  been 
undermined,  and  that  the  East  was,  as  it  were,  di- 
vided into  two  parties,  one  favourable  to  him  and  the 
other  to  Piso. 

32.  The  Death  of  Germanicus  (19  A.D.)  and  the 
Prosecution  of  Piso.  There  was  a  violent  altercation 
between  the  two  men — so  violent  that  Piso  decided 
to  leave  his  province.  He  had  hardly  departed,  how- 
ever, when  Germanicus  became  suddenly  ill  and,  after 
repeated  alternations  of  improvement  and  relapse, 
died  in  the  flower  of  his  manhood  at  the  early  age  of 
34  (October  12,  19). 

This  melancholy  event,  which  was  an  accident  of 
nature  of  a  by  no  means  unusual  character — for  there 
are  many  young  men  who  die  before  their  time — was 
destined  to  kindle  a  tremendous  conflagration.  His 
friends,   his  partisans  and  admirers,   Agrippina,  the 


The  Death  of  Germanicus  139 

opponents  of  Livia  and  Tiberius  and  of  his  policy, 
would  not  admit  that  Germanicus  had  died  or  could 
have  died,  a  natural  death.  He  had  been  killed  by 
one  of  those  poisons  which  were  so  skilfully  prepared  in 
the  East,  and  he  who  had  prepared  it  was  the  man 
whom  Livia  and  Tiberius  had  placed  by  his  side. 
Accusations  began  to  be  made  loudly  and  openly 
against  Piso;  cautions  and  covert  allusions  were  made 
to  Tiberius  as  having  ordered  the  commission  of  the 
crime,  and  in  short  all  Rome  and  all  Italy  mourned  as  a 
public  calamity  the  untimely  death  of  Germanicus  and 
clamoured  for  vengeance.  Grief  for  Germanicus  was 
merely  a  means  for  ventilating  the  discontent  which 
was  felt  against  Tiberius  and  his  government.  All  the 
sincere  republicans  who  believed  that  it  was  merely 
the  will  of  Tiberius  that  prevented  the  restoration  of 
the  ancient  republic;  all  those  whose  ambitions  were  not 
satisfied,  the  enemies  of  Tiberius  and  Augustus,  the 
sincere  friends  of  Germanicus;  the  lower  classes  who 
were  discontented  with  the  austerity  of  the  govern- 
ment and  were  greedy  for  spectacles  and  profuse  do- 
nations— all  these  gave  themselves  up  to  violent  and 
clamorous  manifestations  of  sorrow  when  Agrippina 
arrived  in  Italy  from  Syria  bringing  with  her  the  ashes 
of  Germanicus.  Matters  came  to  such  a  point  that 
Tiberius,  mindful  of  the  customs  of  the  old  republic, 
thought  it  right  to  moderate  these  transports  by  the 
publication  of  a  noble  manifesto:  "Many  illustrious 
Romans,"  he  said,  "have  died  for  the  republic,  but 
none  has  been  mourned  with  such  deep  sorrow.  This 
redounds  to  his  honour  and  to  the  honour  of  all,  but 
it  is  right  that  due  measure  should  not  be  exceeded, 
and  what  might  be  suitable  to  a  modest  family  or  a 
small  city  would  be  out  of  place  among  great  men  and 


140  Tiberius 

in  a  sovereign  people  like  the  Romans.  .  .  .  We 
must  return  to  the  ancient  spirit  of  fortitude  shown 
when  the  divine  Csesar  lost  his  only  daughter  and  the 
Emperor  Augustus  his  grandchildren.  .  .  .  How 
often  has  not  the  Roman  people  had  to  support 
with  firmness  the  destruction  of  whole  armies,  the 
deaths  of  great  generals,  and  the  annihilation  of 
noble  families!  The  great  are  mortal;  only  the  re- 
public is  eternal.  .  .   .  "^ 

The  people  were  silent,  but  Agrippina  and  her  own 
and  her  dead  husband's  friends  kept  up  the  struggle, 
until  one  day  some  of  them  formally  charged  Piso 
with  poisoning.  Piso,  on  hearing  the  news  of  the  death 
of  Germanicus,  had  immediately  returned  to  take ' 
possession  of  his  province.  But  he  had  been  com- 
pelled to  give  up  this  intention  because  the  governors 
appointed  by  Germanicus  and  the  friends  of  the  latter 
in  the  East  had  withstood  him  by  force  of  arms. 
There  had  thus  been  a  beginning  of  civil  v/ar  in  the 
East  which  had  still  further  excited  the  anger  of  Piso's 
enemies.  It  may  easily  be  imagined  in  what  an  at- 
mosphere the  trial  of  Piso  was  conducted  on  his  re- 
turn to  Rome!  Among  all  the  judicial  dramas  of 
which  the  history  of  Rome  is  so  full,  this  was  assuredly 
the  most  terrible.  The  people  were  persuaded  that 
Piso  had  poisoned  Germanicus;  many  added  sotto 
voce  that  he  had  poisoned  him  by  order  of  Tiberius, 
that  Piso  had  the  letters  in  which  the  order  was  given 
and  would  produce  them  at  the  trial — as  if  such  orders, 
supposing  them  to  have  existed,  would  be  given  in 
writing !  In  the  senate  before  whom  the  trial  was  to 
take  place,  the  enemies  of  Tiberius  and  all  the  party 
of    Germanicus    were    determined    to    secure    Piso's 

'  Tac,  Ann.,  iii.,  6. 


Political  Effects  of  the   Trial  of  Piso     141 

condemnation  at  any  cost.  Of  those  who  were  im- 
partial most  were  afraid  of  being  considered  corrupt 
if  they  judged  according  to  their  consciences.  The 
charge  was  absurd;  Tacitus  himself,  in  spite  of  his 
hostility  to  Tiberius,  says  so.  But  what  could  Tiberius 
do  either  for  himself  or  for  justice?  Every  step  he 
took  in  favour  of  the  accused  would  have  been  inter- 
preted as  a  proof  of  his  complicity.  Public  opinion 
was  so  adverse  and  the  senate  so  prejudiced  against 
Piso  that  after  a  few  sittings  he  committed  suicide  to 
escape  an  inevitable  condemnation.  Tiberius  and 
Livia  were  thus  able  at  least  to  save  his  wife  and  his 
sons  and  the  family  fortune. 

33.  The  Political  Effects  of  the  Trial  of  Piso.  This 
trial  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  merely  a  judicial  incident, 
however  terrible;  it  was  a  real  political  catastrophe 
which  was  to  have  the  gravest  consequences  both  for 
Tiberius  and  for  the  empire.  From  it  arose  in  the 
imperial  family  an  incurable  discord;  for  Agrippina, 
who  was  not  appeased  by  the  death  of  Piso,  implacably 
persisted  in  accusing  Tiberius  of  having  caused  the 
death  of  Germanicus.  After  this  trial,  too,  charges 
of  offences  against  the  emperor  and  condemnations 
under  the  lex  de  maiestate  began  to  grow  more  frequent 
— the  charges  and  condemnations  for  which  Tiberius, 
and  after  him  all  the  princes  of  the  Julio-Claudian 
house,  were  to  acquire  so  melancholy  a  celebrity.  It 
should,  however,  be  remembered  that  the  lex  de  maie- 
state was  in  no  way  the  work  of  Tiberius.  It  had  been 
passed  in  a  fit  of  anger  a  hundred  years  before  the 
Christian  era  by  Saturninus,  a  democratic  tribune  of 
the  people,  in  order  to  defend  the  republic  against  the 
intrigues  of  the  great.  It  should  also  be  remembered 
that  the  initiative  in  applying  it  to  the  punishment  of 


142  Tiberius 

offences  against  the  emperor  did  not  come  from  Tibe- 
rius; that  Tiberius,  as  Tacitus  admits,  did  what  he 
could  to  limit  its  application;  that  the  senate,  which 
tried  these  cases,  was  not  in  Tiberius's  time  an  assem- 
bly of  slaves  but  was  on  the  whole  against  the  emperor 
as  the  case  of  Piso  had  shown,  and  that,  therefore,  the 
frequent  condemnations  must  have  had  some  more 
serious  motive  than  fear  of  Tiberius.  Finally  we  must 
bear  in  mind  the  fact  that  the  emperor  was  now  the 
mainstay  of  public  order  throughout  the  empire.  It 
could  not  be  otherwise,  because  the  loyalty  of  the 
legions  depended  on  the  devotion  of  the  soldiers  to  his 
person  and  on  the  oath  which  they  had  sworn  to  him. 
Now  the  emperor,  the  head  of  the  army,  was  being 
unjustly  accused  every  day  by  his  own  relations  in  his 
own  house,  b}^  a  whole  powerful  party  in  the  senate  and 
in  the  upper  classes,  of  having  through  jealousy,  poi- 
soned his  nephew,  a  young  general  much  beloved  by 
the  soldiers,  that  is  to  say  of  having  committed  a  crime 
which  in  the  eyes  of  all  Romans,  would  have  justified 
a  mutiny  of  the  armies !  The  Italians  who  formed  the 
greater  part  of  the  arm}^  were  not  yet  disposed  to 
respect  the  authority  of  a  chief  who  caused  members 
of  his  family  to  be  assassinated  in  order  to  gratify  a 
caprice.  It  is  therefore  clear  that  Agrippina  and  the 
friends  of  Germanicus  by  their  foolish  charges  were 
weakening  the  authority  of  Tiberius  and  therefore 
endangering  public  peace  and  order.  We  cannot  be 
surprised  if  serious -minded  persons  with  the  public 
good  at  heart  thought  it  impossible  to  leave  the 
emperor  exposed  to  these  calumnies,  more  especially 
as  Tiberius  had  not — and  could  not  have — the  author- 
ity and  the  prestige  of  Augustus.  The  growing  fre- 
quency of  cases  under  the  lex  de  maiestate  represents 


Pclitical  Effects  of  the   Trial  of  Pisa     143 

the  natural  reaction  against  the  increasing  perils  of 
the  internal  situation  which  arose  from  the  factions 
and  irrational  opposition  carried  on  by  part  of  the 
senate  and  aristocracy,  and  part  of  the  family  of 
Augustus  against  Tiberius's  government. 

This  reaction  was  the  more  justifiable  as  under  the 
prudent  and  sagacious  control  of  Tiberius  the  situa- 
tion of  the  empire  had  notably  improved.  About  this 
time,  for  example,  the  German  policy  of  the  emperor 
began  to  bear  fruit.  The  Marcomanni  and  the  Cher- 
usci  mutually  weakened  each  other  by  constant  wars, 
and  the  Cherusci  tore  each  other  to  pieces  in  atrocious 
civil  conflicts,  in  one  of  which  Arminius  himself  had 
perished.  The  storm  which  had  been  gathering  for 
many  years  on  the  northern  frontier  was  dispersed. 
With  equal  good  fortune  Tiberius's  lieutenants  in 
Africa  repressed  the  dangerous  forays  of  a  Ntmiidian 
adventurer  named  Tacfarinas.  The  insurrection  of 
certain  Thracian  tribes  was  also  quelled,  and  in  Gaul 
some  more  or  less  violent  agitations,  alleged  to  be  due 
to  excessive  taxation,  were  no  less  firmly  dealt  with 
(21  A.D.).  As  for  internal  administration,  even  so 
antipathetic  a  historian  as  Tacitus  is  forced  to  admit 
that  up  to  this  point  the  government  of  Tiberius  had 
been  a  model,  that  all  the  most  serious  concerns  of  the 
republic  were  referred  to  the  senate  and  were  discussed 
with  entire  liberty  by  that  assembly,  that  honours 
were  distributed  among  the  men  who  were  best  quali- 
fied by  birth  and  merit  to  receive  them,  that  the  offices 
of  State  were  restored  to  their  pristine  dignity  and  the 
laws  applied  with  good  sense  and  impartiality,  that 
the  departments  controlled  by  the  prince  were  en- 
trusted to  capable  persons,  that  the  provinces  were 
laid  under  contribution  with  moderation,  and  that  the 


144  Tiberius 

law  and  the  courts  of  justice  were  above  all  men  even 
the  prince  himself.'  It  is  not  surprising  that  there 
were  people  who  thought  that,  since  the  law  of  Satur- 
ninus  existed,  it  was  right  and  wise  to  use  it  for  the 
defence  of  so  excellent  a  prince  against  so  injudicious 
an  opposition;  it  would  have  been  strange  had  it 
been  otherwise. 

34.  Tiberius  at  Capri  and  the  Struggle  between 
Agrippina  and  Sejanus  (26-31  A.D,).  But  the  lex 
de  maiestate,  applied  as  it  had  to  be  applied  in  a  society 
in  which  private  prosecution  was  the  only  organ  of  the 
law,  could  only  check  without  eradicating  the  evil 
from  which  the  empire  was  suffering — all  the  more 
because  Tiberius  showed  great  weakness.  Whether 
it  was  due  to  old  age  or  to  weariness,  to  his  growing 
detestation  of  mankind  or  to  the  uncertainties  of  his 
position,  the  fact  remains  that  this  man,  who  was 
destined  to  pass  into  history  as  an  unbridled  tyrant, 
betrayed  extraordinary  irresolution  to  all  who  viewed 
his  actions  from  close  at  hand.  Not  only  did  he  allow 
Agrippina  and  the  old  party  of  Germanicus  which  had 
now  gathered  round  her,  complete  freedom  to  calum- 
niate him  and  to  excite  the  people  against  him,  but  he 
actually  permitted  them  to  bring  forward  Nero,  the 
elder  son  of  Germanicus  who  was  fourteen  years  old 
in  21 ,  as  his  possible  antagonist  and  successor.  When, 
in  23,  his  own  son  Drusus,  who  after  the  death  of  Ger- 
manicus had  become  his  principal  collaborator  and  who 
in  the  previous  year  he  had  caused  to  be  invested  with 
the  tribunician  power,  died  in  his  38th  year,  he  recon- 
ciled himself  with  Agrippina  and  in  a  noble  speech 

'  Tac,  Ann.,  iii.,  60;  and  above  all  Ann.,  iv.,  6.  This  apprecia- 
tion of  the  government  of  Tiberius,  coming  from  Tacitus,  is  of 
capital  importance. 


Struggle  between  Agrippina  and  Sejanus  145 

presented  Nero  and  his  younger  brother  to  the  senate 
as  the  future  hopes  of  the  repubHc.  Thus  Tiberius 
took  the  initiative  towards  a  reconciliation,  and  con- 
cord in  the  imperial  family  might  have  been  re-estab- 
lished if  Agrippina  had  been  a  wiser  woman,  and  if  the 
old  quarrels  had  not  been  envenomed  by  the  interven- 
tion of  a  new  personage,  ^lius  Sejanus,  the  com- 
mander of  the  guard. 

Sejanus  belonged  to  the  equestrian  order  and  was 
what  we  should  call  a  permanent  official.  He  had 
acquired,  more  especially  since  the  deaths  of  Ger- 
manicus  and  Drusus,  the  complete  confidence  of  the 
emperor.  He  was  Tiberius's  daily  helper  in  the  diffi- 
culties of  administration,  the  only  man  of  experience 
with  whom  he  could  discuss  the  complicated  questions 
which  never  ceased  to  arise.  But  Sejanus  feared  that 
he  might  be  supplanted  by  the  sons  of  Germanicus 
in  the  favour  of  the  prince  and  therefore  made  use  of 
every  imprudence  committed  by  Agrippina  and  her 
party  to  aggravate  the  discord  by  which  the  im- 
perial house  was  rent,  and,  in  a  word,  Rome  and 
the  senate  were  disturbed  by  a  ferocious  struggle 
between  the  party  of  Sejanus  and  the  party  of 
Agrippina  and  the  young  Nero.  Intrigues,  scandals, 
prosecutions,  and  calumnies  were  the  weapons  com- 
monly used  in  this  conflict.  As  usual  Tiberius 
looked  on  as  an  almost  inert  spectator  until,  in  the 
year  26,  he  crowned  his  irresolute  course  of  conduct 
by  a  culminating  act  of  weakness.  Disgusted  by 
all  these  quarrels  which  he  could  not  control,  the 
prince  ended  by  forsaking  Rome  and  Latium,  and 
retired  into  a  second,  and  this  time  irrevocable,  exile 
at  Capri,  the  wildest  and  most  rugged  of  the  Par- 
thenopean  islands,  where  he  gave  himself  up  to  com- 


146  Tiberius 

munion  with  nature  since  mankind  seemed  incapable 
of  understanding  him. 

In  spite  of  this  Tiberius  did  not  lose  hold  of  the 
government  of  the  empire.  The  solitary  of  Capri 
was  still  a  conscientious  ruler.  But  henceforth  he 
could  communicate  with  the  empire  only  through  his 
trusted  praetorian  prefect  whose  power  and  authority 
rapidly  increased  in  Rome.  In  the  absence  of  Tibe- 
rius, Sejanus  gradually  became  the  real  emperor,  be- 
cause now  the  decisions  which  governed  the  empire 
from  Capri  depended  mainly  on  what  he  thought 
and  what  he  advised.  Sejanus  managed  to  compass 
what  Tiberius  had  been  unable  or  unwilling  to  do. 
He  freed  Rome  from  the  presence  of  Agrippina  and  her 
son.  The  catastrophe  did  not  come  until  the  year 
29  A.D.  after  the  death  of  Li  via  at  the  age  of  86.  So 
long  as  Li  via  was  alive  Sejanus  had  not  dared  to  attack 
the  son  and  the  widow  of  Germanicus.  But  immedi- 
ately after  the  disappearance  of  their  last  protectress 
Agrippina  and  Nero  were  accused  of  conspiring  against 
Tiberius  and  condemned  to  exile.  Nero  soon  after- 
wards committed  suicide.  It  is  impossible  to  say 
how  far  the  charge  was  well  founded  and  the  condem- 
nation just.  It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  Agrippina 
herself  formed  a  conspiracy  under  the  eyes  of  Sejanus, 
and  it  is  more  likely  that  the  prosecution  made  skilful 
use  of  the  imprudences  and  the  unwise  speeches  to 
which  Agrippina  was  particularly  prone.  Ancient 
Rome,  both  under  the  republic  and  under  the  empire, 
suffered  from  the  two  irremediable  evils  of  espionage 
and  delation.  A  public  department  for  prosecutions, 
as  we  now  know  it,  did  not  as  yet  exist,  and  private 
delation  and  accusation  was  considered  a  meritorious 
action  and,  in  case  of  success,  was  ver>'  profitable,  as 


Struggle  between  Agrippina  and  Sejanus  147 

part  of  the  fortune  of  the  condemned  passed  to  the 
informer.  It  is  easy  to  see,  therefore,  that^^after  the 
death  of  Livia,  the  departure  of  Tiberius  from  Rome 
and  the  establishment  of  the  omnipotence  of  Sejanus 
who  wished  to  drive  out  Agrippina,  volunteers  could 
easily  be  found  who  would  rush  in  from  ever}^  side  to 
furnish  the  information  and  the  proofs  necessary  to 
secure  the  ruin  of  the  imprudent  lady  under  the  penal- 
ties of  the  lex  de  maiestate. 

However  this  may  be,  even  if,  as  is  probable,  the 
punishment  which  fell  upon  Agrippina  was  greater 
than  she  deserved,  this  sentence  sent  into  exile  an 
eccentric  woman  who  had  done  nothing  but  create 
embarrassments  for  a  responsible  government  seri- 
ously occupied  in  serving  the  public.  That  the 
government  of  Tiberius  continued  zealously  to  follow 
this  course  is  explicitly  stated  by  a  contemporary  who 
strikingly  confirms  what  we  have  already  read  in 
Tacitus:  "Good  faith  was  recalled  to  the  Forum,  sedi- 
tion, intrigue,  and  favouritism  were  driven  from  the 
Campus  Martius  and  discord  from  the  senate.  A  re- 
birth of  justice,  equity,  and  industry,  which  seemed  to 
have  disappeared  for  ever,  was  seen  in  Rome.  The 
magistrates  again  acquired  respect  for  their  duties; 
the  senate  recovered  its  ancient  dignity,  the  courts 
their  solemnity.  There  were  no  more  riots  in  the 
theatres,  the  citizens  by  choice  or  necessity  were  again 
brought  to  see  the  necessity  for  industry  and  good  con- 
duct. Virtue  was  honoured,  vice  punished;  the  small 
respected  but  did  not  fear  the  great ;  the  superior  took 
precedence  of  his  inferior  but  did  not  despise  him. 
The  cost  of  living  was  moderate;  men  enjoyed  the 
blessings  of  peace.  Diffused  from  one  end  of  the 
world  to  the  other  from  the  West  to  the  East,  from 


148  Tiberius 

the  North  to  the  South  this  pax  Augusta  guaranteed 
complete  security  everywhere.  .  .  .  Cities  were 
restored  in  Asia;  the  provinces  were  freed  from  the 
despotism  of  their  governors,  honour  was  bestowed  on 
merit;  punishment  was  rare  but,  when  needed,  prompt 
and  opportune.  Justice  and  virtue  drove  out  favourit- 
ism and  intrigue,  for  the  best  of  princes  taught  his 
fellow  citizens  to  do  good  by  his  own  practice  and, 
though  he  was  in  authority  superior  to  all,  he  was  still 
more  superior  by  the  example  of  his  own  conduct."' 

35.  Culmination  and  Fall  of  Sejanus  (31  A.D.). 
But  an  even  more  terrible  storm  was  brewing  at 
Rome.  With  the  condemnation  of  Agrippina  the 
power  of  Sejanus  reached  its  culmination.  Honours 
of  all  kinds  were  showered  upon  him  by  Tiberius  and 
by  the  senate.  In  31  he  received  what  appeared  to  be 
the  supreme  recompense  of  his  long  service.  He,  the 
obscure  knight,  was  raised  to  the  consulship  with  Ti- 
berius as  his  colleague,  and,  soon  afterwards,  there 
was  talk  of  an  engagement  between  him  and  Tiberius 's 
granddaughter,  the  divorced  wife  of  Nero.  What  more 
could  be  desired  by  a  man  bom  in  the  equestrian  order  ? 

Sejanus,  however,  did  desire  more.  He  wished  to 
succeed  Tiberius  in  the  supreme  position ;  but  Tiberius, 
who  was  a  true  Claudius,  could  not  suffer  that  a  knight 
should  become  the  head  of  the  Roman  nobility.  In 
this  very  year,  indeed,  his  thoughts  and  affections 
seemed  to  be  turning  in  a  special  manner  towards 
Caius  the  youngest  of  the  sons  of  Germanicus.  Though 
Caius  was  not  yet  twenty,  he  made  him  a  Pontiff  and, 
what  was  of  more  importance,  in  the  official  reports 
which  from  time  to  time  the  emperor  had  occasion  to 
send  to  the  senate  he  manifested  for  Caius  the  same 

•  Veil,  Pat.,  ii.,  126. 


Culmination  and  Fall  of  Sejanus      149 

sentiments  as  he  had  shown  towards  his  elder  brothers 
nine  years  before.  At  this  point  Sejanus  seems  to 
have  reflected  that  if  he  continued  to  serve  Tiberius, 
old,  unpopular,  even  detested  as  he  was,  he  would  gain 
nothing  but  the  certainty  of  falling  a  victim  at  the 
emperor's  death  to  the  accumulations  of  hatred  which 
were  being  heaped  up  against  him,  and  to  have  de- 
cided to  come  to  an  understanding  with  the  enemies 
of  Tiberius,  who  were  so  numerous  in  the  senate,  with 
a  view  to  overthrowing  the  prince  and  taking  his  place. 
We  cannot  say  with  certainty  what  the  constitution 
and  importance  of  this  conspiracy  may  have  been. 
It  is  certain  that  on  one  terrible  day  at  Capri,  Tiberius 
was  made  aware  of  the  machinations  of  Sejanus  and 
that  his  informant  was  his  relative,  the  gentle  Antonia, 
daughter  of  the  triumvir,  one  of  the  few  people  who 
had  remained  faithful  to  him  through  his  days  of  glor^'' 
and  of  sorrow,  and  who  was  honoured  as  the  widow  of 
the  gi'eat  Drusus  and  the  mother  of  Germanicus  whom 
Tiberius  was  said  to  have  poisoned.  It  must  have 
been  a  terrible  blow  to  the  old  emperor.  After  having 
lost,  one  after  the  other,  his  dearest  relatives  and  col- 
laborators, after  having  been  persecuted  and  tor- 
mented by  his  own  family,  was  he  now  to  be  deceived 
by  his  most  trusted  friend,  whom  he  had  never  doubted 
for  a  single  instant,  who  owed  everything  to  him,  and 
to  whom,  as  the  supreme  proof  of  his  confidence,  he 
had  entrusted  the  command  of  his  personal  body- 
guard? Was  he  now  to  be  at  the  mercy  of  his  own 
praetorians,  corrupted  and  incited  to  mutiny  ? 

Tiberius,  however,  though  long  suffering,  was  not  a 
man  who  would  let  himself  be  tricked  without  taking 
steps  to  defend  himself.  Without  loss  of  time  and 
with  consummate  skill  he  began  to  isolate  Sejanus, 


150  Tiberius 

without  allowing  him  to  suspect  what  was  happening. 
By  satisfying  some  disappointed  ambitions,  by  con- 
ferring some  favours,  by  accentuating  his  affection  for 
Caius,  by  repudiating  some  of  the  less  laudable  fea- 
tures of  the  work  of  his  praetorian  praefect,  he  under- 
mined the  position  of  his  crafty  minister,  the  fortunate 
parvenu  whose  power  and  reputation  were  due  entirely 
to  the  favour  of  his  prince.  Then,  on  October  i8,  31, 
when  he  thought  the  moment  opportune,  Tiberius 
secretly  deposed  Sejanus  from  the  command  of  the 
guard  which  was  given  to  a  certain  Macro.  One 
of  the  cohortes  vigilum  was  entrusted  with  the  defence 
of  the  senate  house  and  then,  at  a  sitting  of  the  senate 
the  emperor  caused  a  letter  to  be  read  in  which  he  ex- 
plicitly accused  his  ex-prefect  and  some  others  of  high 
treason.  The  sensation  produced  was  tremendous, 
and,  if  the  rapidity  with  which  the  senate  condemned 
Sejanus  may  be  imputed  to  the  servility  of  that  as- 
sembly, the  vehement  demonstrations  of  public  feel- 
ing which  took  place  at  the  time  showed  clearly  the 
confidence  in  the  rectitude  of  the  emperor  which  at 
least  part  of  Rome  still  cherished. 

The  condemnation  and  execution  of  Sejanus  was 
followed  by  many  others.  It  would  be  rash  on  the 
strength  of  the  documents  known  to  the  ancients  to 
affirm  that  the  absent  prince  was  more  responsible  for 
these  than  the  senate  whose  attitude  had  contributed 
so  much  to  encourage  the  ambitions  of  Sejanus.^ 
From  the  very  brief  and  summary  accounts  of  a  few 
of  the  cases  amid  the  flood  of  prosecutions,  it  is  im- 

'  Cf.  Suet.,  Cal.,  30:  Scepe  ifi  cunctos  pariter  senatores,  ut 
Seiani  clientes  .  .  .  [Caligula]  invectus  est,  prolatis  libellis  quos 
crematos  simulaverat,  defensa  que  Tiberii  scBvitia  quasi  necessaria, 
quum  tot  criminantihus  credcndum  esset. 


Culmination  and  Fall  of  Sejanus      151 

possible  to  say  how  often  justice  and  truth  were  vin- 
dicated and  how  often  both  were  outraged.  Tiberius 
would  have  been  more  than  human  if  he  had  shown 
mercy  this  time,  for  in  these  very  days  he  was  struck 
to  the  heart  by  a  blow  more  terrible  than  all  the  rest. 
The  first  wife  of  Sejanus,  whom  he  had  divorced  in 
order  to  ally  himself  with  the  imperial  family,  com- 
mitted suicide,  but  not  before  she  had  revealed  that 
the  death  of  the  emperor's  son  Drusus  was  due  to 
poison  administered  to  him  by  Sejanus  himself  and 
by  Drusus's  unfaithful  wife  Livilla,  daughter  of  An- 
tonia.  It  is  practically  certain  that  this  was  an  atro- 
cious calumny  invented  by  a  jealous  woman  who 
wished  to  be  revenged.  But  everybody  believed  it, 
and  a  new  and  even  more  terrible  scandal  broke  out 
which  was  followed  by  a  new  tragedy.  Innocent  or 
guilty,  Livilla  in  order  to  escape  an  accusation  which  she 
could  never  have  disproved,  starved  herself  to  death. 

36.  The  Last  Years  of  Tiberius  (31-37  A.D.).  These 
were  months  of  black  terror.  The  Roman  aristocracy 
had  been  bled  once  more,  and  they  revenged  them- 
selves, as  the  weak  always  do,  by  bespattering  with 
atrocious  calumnies  the  solitary  life  led  at  Capri 
by  the  aged  prince  now  over  seventy  and  in  feeble 
health.  To  judge  of  these  abominable  inventions  it  is 
enough  to  ask  whether  they  are  likely  to  be  true  of  a 
man  of  that  age,  and  how  the  historians  came  to  know 
all  the  details  which  they  so  picturesquely  recount. 
As  before,  Tiberius  repeatedly  intervened  to  check 
the  universal  delirium  of  persecutions,  servility, 
mutual  vengeance,  espionage,  and  suicide  which  was 
sometimes  heroic  but  more  often  the  desperate  refuge 
of  the  guilty.  All  these  horrors,  were,  however,  con- 
fined to  Rome,  which  was  a  small  corner  of  the  world. 


152  Tiberius 

The  remainder  of  the  empire  knew  only  the  excellent 
administration  of  Tiberius  which  was  full  of  firmness 
and  good  sense,  and  uniform  in  good  and  evil  fortune. 
Italy  was  regularly  provisioned.  The  provinces  were 
tranquil  and  provided  with  good  governors  who  grew 
old  at  their  posts,  and  taught  the  provincials  that 
proconsulships  and  propractorships  were  not  positions 
created  in  order  to  enable  them  to  make  money  or 
pursue  enjoyment,  but  offices  which  must  be  admin- 
istered for  the  public  good. 

Peace  reigned  everywhere  on  the  frontiers.  In  the 
last  years  of  Tiberius's  reign  the  Armenian  question 
showed  signs  of  reawakening,  but  the  diplomatic  skill 
of  the  prince  soon  restored  calm.  For  though  Tibe- 
rius was  now  78  and  his  physical  forces  were  declining, 
his  intelligence  was  still  alert.  A  few  days  before 
March  16,  37,  he  had  gone  to  Misenum  for  a  change  of 
climate,  and  there  a  friend  of  his,  who  was  a  physician 
and  had  come  to  greet  him,  observed  the  feebleness  of 
the  emperor's  pulse  and  informed  Macro  the  com- 
mander of  the  Prcetorian  Guard.  Tiberius  understood 
that  his  last  hour  was  at  hand  and,  wishing  to  honour 
the  anxious  friend  whom  he  would  never  see  again,  he 
insisted  on  ordering  a  banquet  and  on  remaining  at 
table  longer  than  usual.  Two  days  later  one  of  the 
greatest  of  the  Roman  emperors  died  suddenly,  alone 
at  the  last  without  a  friend  at  his  bedside — a  death 
as  lonely  as  his  life  had  been  (March  16,  37  a.d.)  ' 

'  The  account  of  Tiberius's  death  may,  it  seems,  be  thus  recon- 
structed by  combining  what  Tacitus  {Ann.,  vi.,  50)  tells  us  with 
the  testimony  of  Seneca  quoted  by  Suetonius  {Tib.,  73).  The 
hatred  of  his  enemies  surrounded  even  his  deathbed  with  inven- 
tions the  object  of  which  was  to  put  it  about  that  his  death  had 
been  violent. 


CHAPTER  VI 

CALIGULA    AND    CLAUDIUS 

(37-54  A.D.) 

37.  The  Election  of  Caligula  and  the  Reasons  for 
it  (37  A.D.).  Unlike  Augustus,  Tiberius  died  sole 
emperor  without  a  colleague.  The  senate,  therefore, 
was  free  either  to  continue  the  experiment  of  the 
principate  or  at  once  to  attempt  a  complete  restora- 
tion of  the  republic.  It  does  not  appear,  however,  that 
they  spent  much  time  in  considering  the  latter 
alternative,  and  this  is  also  a  clear  proof  that  the 
"tyranny"  of  Tiberius  is  an  invention  of  the  ancient 
historians.  The  authority  of  the  prince  was  now  too 
useful  to  be  dispensed  with,  even  though  the  holders 
of  the  office  had  been  unpopular  in  many  quarters. 

It  was  at  once  recognized,  therefore,  that  a  new 
princeps  must  be  put  in  the  place  of  the  deceased. 
The  question  was,  who  should  it  be?  If  a  successor 
was  to  be  found  in  the  family  of  Augustus  there  was 
not  much  room  for  choice.  The  surviving  male 
members  of  that  family  were  three :  Tiberius  Claudius 
Nero,  the  brother  of  Germanicus;  Caius  Caligula,  the 
son  of  Germanicus,  the  only  male  who  had  been 
spared  by  the  storm  which  had  destroyed  his  father's 
house;  and  Tiberius  the  son  of  Drusus,  whom  the 

153 


154  Caligula  and  Claudius 

Emperor  Tiberius  had  adopted  by  his  will.  Of  these 
the  last  was  a  boy  of  seventeen  and  the  first  though 
of  mature  years,  was  looked  upon  as  a  half  crazy 
imbecile,  the  butt  of  women  and  freedmen.  For  this 
reason  he  was  kept  in  seclusion  and  had  in  fact 
occupied  no  office.  Thus  there  remained  only  Caius 
Caligula.  Caius  was  twenty-seven.  He  was  prob- 
ably born  in  Germany  during  his  father's  campaigns,  ■ 
and  it  is  certain  that  he  was  brought  up  there  among 
the  soldiers.  While  still  a  little  boy  he  had  worn  the 
soldier's  dress  and  had  donned  the  military  boots 
{caligulcE)  whence  he  acquired  the  sobriquet  by  which 
he  is  known  to  history.  Later  he  had  accompanied 
his  father  to  the  East,  and  after  the  death  of  Ger- 
manicus  had  lived  first  with  his  mother,  then  with  his 
grandmother  Li  via,  and  finally  with  his  paternal 
grandmother  Antonia.  He  was  intelligent,  eloquent, 
a  lover  of  the  arts,  and  a  man  of  taste.  But  he  was 
clearly  anything  but  well  balanced;  being  irritable, 
impulsive,  and  almost  insanely  attached  to  the  ideas 
by  which  he  was  from  time  to  time  possessed.  He 
had,  in  short,  both  qualities  and  defects,  and  he  was, 
moreover,  still  very  young  to  become  the  head  of  a 
great  empire.  His  defects  however  were  not  known 
to  most  people;  and  after  all  there  was  no  other  suit- 
able member  of  the  family. 

It  was  therefore  necessary  to  be  content  with  him 
unless  it  was  intended  to  seek  some  one  outside  the 
descendants  of  Augustus.  This  would  not  have  been 
impossible,  and  would  have  been  quite  legal,  for  a 
hereditary  principate  had  not  so  far  been  even  dis- 
tantly adumbrated  in  the  constitution.     Any  senator 

'  Tac,  Ann.,  i.,  41.  Others,  however,  say  at  Tibur  or  Antiutn: 
cj.  Suet.,  Cal.,  8, 


The  First  Acts  of  Caligula  155 

might  have  become  the  successor  of  Tiberius.  There 
was,  however,  an  important  consideration  which  must 
have  had  its  effect  in  inducing  the  senate  to  prefer  a 
member  of  the  family  of  Augustus.  For  at  least  fifty 
years  the  barbarians  and  the  army  had  identified  the 
Roman  Empire  with  the  Jtilio-Claudian  house.  The 
army,  in  particular,  cherished  for  the  members  of  that 
family  an  attachment  beyond  all  comparison.  Among 
the  soldiers,  especially  those  stationed  on  the  Rhine 
and  on  the  Danube,  the  name  of  Germanicus's  son 
was  most  popular.  From  the  militar}^  and  political 
point  of  view  Caligula's  appointment  presented  great 
advantages  and  he  was  accordingly  elected  (March 
18,  37  A.D.).' 

38.  The  First  Acts  of  Caligula.  According  to  the 
ancient  historians  the  government  of  the  new  and 
youthful  emperor  had  the  happiest  beginning.  Amid 
universal  jubilation  Caligula  declined  to  propose 
divine  honours  for  Tiberius  as  had  been  done  in  the 
case  of  Augustus.  He  burned,  or  made  a  show  of 
burning,  all  the  political  papers  of  his  predecessor, 
forbade  accusations  of  IcBsa  maiestas,  and  granted  a 
general  amnesty  to  all  who  had  been  accused,  con- 
demned, or  exiled.  The  people  once  more  had  dona- 
tions in  profusion.  The  soldiers  received  gratuities 
which  doubled  the  legacies  left  to  them  by  Tiberius. 
Italy  was  exempted  from  some  of  the  recent  taxation. 
The  theatres  began  to  reopen  and  public  games  were 
held  with  a  frequency  to  which  the  citizens  had  for 
many  years  been  unaccustomed.  Caligula  restored  to 
the  comitia  their  full  electoral  powers  and  did  his 
utmost  to  distinguish  clearly  the  powers  of  the  senate 
from  those  of  the  prince.     He  restored  the  obligation 

•  Cf.  Acta  fratrum  Analium,  in  C.  I.  L.,  vi.,  i,  202,  p.  467. 


156  Caligula  and  Claudius 

of  the  prince  to  give  an  account  of  public  expenditure 
ordered  by  him,  annulled  the  sentences  pronounced 
against  his  mother  and  his  brother  and  gave  solemn 
burial  to  their  ashes,  and  on  July  ist,  at  the  inaugura- 
tion of  his  first  consulship,  he  made  a  great  speech  in 
the  senate,  which  was  intended  to  be  the  political 
programme  of  his  reign,  and  in  the  course  of  which  he 
declared  that  his  chief  model  would  not  be  Tiberius 
but  the  divine  Augustus.  All  hearts  were  thrilled 
with  the  most  joyous  expectations. 

39.  The  Volte  Face  of  Caligula  and  his  Attempts  to 
Orientalize  the  Empire.  After  eight  months  of  power 
if  we  may  believe  the  ancient  historians,  Caligula  was 
suddenly  seized  with  illness  and  from  the  wreck  of  a 
good  and  kind  emperor'  there  emerged  the  mad  and 
cruel  tyrant  who  tormented  the  Roman  world  with 
his  perversities  until  the  beginning  of  the  year  41. 
But  ancient  historians  in  writing  of  the  Caesars  have 
been  much  too  fond  of  dividing  their  administrations 
into  two  parts,  the  first  admirable,  the  second  de- 
testable— as,  for  instance  in  the  case  of  Tiberius,  Nero, 
Domitian,  and  Commodus.  The  fact  as  regards 
Caligula  is  that  several  of  his  earliest  acts  must 
necessarily  have  put  on  its  guard  any  people  less 
inclined  to  self-delusion  than  the  Romans.  The  young 
prince  had  begun  by  depriving  the  one  surviving 
senatorial  proconsul  (of  Africa)  in  the  empire  who, 
since  the  days  of  Augustus,  still  held  the  imperium 
militare,  of  the  two  legions  under  his  command.  What 
was  even  worse,  he  had  conferred  on  his  grandmother 
Antonia  and  on  his  sisters  the  privileges  of  the  Vestal 
Virgins  and  had  directed  that  the  names  of  his  sisters 
were  to  be  mentioned  in  all  the  prayers  that  magis- 
trates and  priests  offered  every  year  for  the  prosperity 


The   Volte  Face  of  Caligula  157 

of  the  emperor  and  the  people.  Though  he  affected  to 
call  himself  the  great  grandson  of  Augustus  he  had  re- 
established the  memory  of  Mark  Antony  and  had 
suppressed  the  annual  festival  which  Augustus  had 
established  to  commemorate  the  victory  of  Actium. 
He  had  officially  established  the  cult  of  the  Egyptian 
divinity  Isis,  and  he  himself  lived  surrounded  by 
Egyptian  domestics,  while  the  most  faithful  and 
influential  of  his  freedmen  was  an  Alexandrian,  a 
certain  Helicon.  Finally  we  know  that,  on  the  eve  of 
his  illness,  Caligula,  who  had  become  a  widower,  had 
the  intention  of  marrying  and  making  his  colleague 
in  the  empire  his  own  sister  Drusilla,  to  whom,  more- 
over, in  a  will  made  while  he  was  ill,  he  had  left  the 
empire  as  a  legacy  as  if  it  were  a  thing  of  which  he 
could  dispose! 

The  truth  is  that  from  the  very  beginning  Caligula 
showed  signs  of  what  historians  have  called  his 
"madness,"  and  which  must  have  appeared  to  the 
Romans  to  be  such.  That  his  conduct  was  partly 
due  to  insanity  we  may  agree,  but  it  was  only  partly, 
for  the  idea  which  inspired  his  policy,  though  chimeri- 
cal in  the  circumstances  to  which  Caligula  wished  to 
apply  it,  had  in  itself  a  certain  logical  consistency 
giving  a  meaning  and  a  coherency  to  many  of  his 
acts  which  at  first  sight  look  like  the  wild  caprices  of 
a  disordered  brain.  Indeed,  if  we  set  aside  some  of  the 
more  absurd  stories  handed  down  by  the  ancients, 
which  are  less  damaging  to  the  young  prince  than  to 
the  historians  who  have  believed  them  and  their 
readers  who  have  accepted  them,  we  shall  find  it 
possible  to  discern  in  Caligula's  proceedings  a  clear 
and  distinct  purpose  which  was  to  orientalize  Roman 
society  and  government  by  force,  and  to  found  in 


158  Caligula  and  Claiidius 

Rome  a  monarchy  analogous  to  that  which  until 
sixty  years  previously  had  existed  on  the  banks  of  the 
Nile.  Caligula  was  an  orientalizer  who  repudiated 
and  wished  to  destroy  all  Roman  traditions  and  to  set 
up  at  Rome  in  a  single  day  a  monarchy  like  that  of 
Egypt.  Hence  his  mania  for  self-deification  and  his 
violent  efforts  to  impose  on  the  Romans  and  on  the 
provincials,  even  on  the  Jews  who  were  most  recalci- 
trant, the  cult  of  himself  and  of  his  family.  Hence 
too  his  assiunption  of  the  title  of  Brother  of  Jove,  his 
affecting  to  call  his  fellow  citizens  his  "subjects"  and 
himself  their  "master,  "  the  new  etiquette  and  customs 
of  his  court,  the  desire  to  implant  in  the  mind  of 
everybody  and  at  any  cost  the  idea  of  his  omnipotence, 
the  official  rehabilitation  of  Antony  who  had  wished 
to  continue  the  dynasty  of  the  Ptolemies  at  Alexan- 
dria, the  oriental  splendour  of  the  festivals  with  which 
he  sought  to  dazzle  the  people,  and  the  marriage  with 
his  sister,  projected  as  an  attempt  to  introduce  at 
Rome  the  dynastic  custom  of  the  Ptolemies  and  the 
Pharaohs  which  countenanced  marriages  between 
brothers  and  sisters  in  order  to  preserve  the  purity  of 
the  royal  race.  Hence,  finally,  the  will  in  which  he 
left  the  empire,  which  he  looked  upon  as  his  own,  to 
Drusilla,  and  the  temples  he  erected  and  the  divine 
honours  which  he  paid  to  her  when  she  died.' 

The  same  tendencies  which  inspired  his  home  policy 
are  visible  in  his  foreign  policy  as  well.  In  the  East  his 
object  was  not  the  Romanization  of  the  provinces,  but 
their  complete  Hellenization,  not  conquest  but  the 
formation  of  a  ring  of  friendh^  client  states.  With  this 
in  view  he  reconstituted  the  kingdom  of  Commagene 

'  On  this  interpretation  of  the  government  of  CaHgula,  cf. 
G.  Ferrero,  The  Women  of  the  Ccesars,  New  York,  191 1,  pp.  212  S. 


The   Volte  Face  of  Caligula  159 

in  the  first  year  of  his  principate  and  even  added  to  it  a 
strip  of  the  coast  of  Cilicia,  restoring  it  to  the  son  of 
Antiochus  whom  Tiberius  had  deposed  together  with 
his  consficated  patrimony.  In  the  same  year,  37  a.d., 
Caligula  separated  northern  and  western  Palestine 
from  the  province  of  Syria  to  which  it  had  been  at- 
tached since  34,  and  assigned  it,  together  with  some 
neighbouring  territories  such  as  Celesiria  and  Abilene 
to  Herod  Agrippa,  the  nephew  of  Herod  the  Great, 
who  was  then  living  at  Rome.  Similarly  he  restored 
to  his  throne  the  king  of  Nabateeans,  gave  Iturcea  an 
Arabian  king  and  a  Thracian  monarch  to  Armenia 
Minor  and  a  portion  of  Pontus.  Nor  can  it  be  said 
that  his  oriental  policy  was  imprudent  or  dangerous 
except  in  Judasa,  where  he  attempted  to  impose  the 
"innate  divinity"  of  the  emperor  on  a  people  which 
made  bold  to  prefer  their  own  single  and  universal 
God.  In  vain  did  the  prince  order  the  troops  of 
Syria  to  enter  Jerusalem  to  compel  the  synagogues  to 
admit  the  statues  of  the  new  Roman  deity.  All  he 
accomplished  was  to  fan  the  first  sparks  of  the  con- 
flagration which  was  destined  to  break  out  thirty 
years  later. 

The  West,  on  the  other  hand,  was  regarded  by 
Caligula  as  the  source  from  which  to  replenish  the 
treasury  which  had  been  emptied  by  his  prodigalities. 
Between  39  and  40  he  attempted  a  raid  on  the  gold 
and  other  riches  of  the  Gallic  provinces  which  he 
intended  to  continue  in  Spain,  Germany,  and  Britain. 
But  his  forces  were  too  small  for  such  great  designs, 
and  in  the  West  his  policy  was  much  more  feeble  than 
in  the  East.  His  invasion  of  Germany  remained  an 
unfulfilled  aspiration,  his  conquest  of  Britain  was  cut 
short  bv  the  arrival  of  an  embassy  bringing  many 


i6o  Caligula  and  ChuuHiis 

gifts  and  verbal  promises  of  submission;'  the  rai^  on 
Gaul  was  interrupted  or  at  least  seriously  disturbed 
by  a  conspiracy  formed  by  Cn.  Cornelius  Gaetulicus, 
one  of  his  generals,  in  concert  with  some  of  his  own 
relations  (39  a.d.)- 

40.  The  End  of  Caligula  (Jan.  24,  41  A.D.).  This 
attempt  to  divert  the  turbid  streams  of  the  Nile  and 
the  Euphrates  into  the  current  of  Roman  life  seemed 
unheard-of  madness  to  the  Romans.  But,  once  the 
principle  is  admitted,  many  of  Caligula's  apparently 
insensate  acts  explain  themselves.  His  insanity, 
therefore,  consisted  less  in  the  strangeness  and  violence 
of  his  individual  actions  than  in  the  idea  from  which 
these  actions  came,  the  idea  that  by  the  will  of  one 
man  the  republic  could  be  transformed  into  a  mon- 
archy like  that  of  the  Ptolemies. 

Caligula  in  fact  soon  became  highly  unpopular  even 
with  the  lower  classes  who  profited  largely  by  his 
profuse  expenditure.  Rome  and  Italy  were  still  so 
much  attached  to  the  past  that  the  monarchical  and 
oriental  craze  of  the  young  prince  excited  the  contempt 
and  disgust  of  all  classes  in  the  community.  Tiberius 
had  been  hated  for  his  too  great  attachment  to  tradi- 
tion ;  Caligula  was  not  less  detested  because  of  his  too 
manifest  revolt  against  it,  for  in  those  days  men  could 
neither  live  entirely  in  accordance  with  tradition,  nor 
yet  abandon  it  altogether.  In  order  to  impose  his 
oriental  dreams  on  his  subjects  and  to  lessen  the  resist- 
ance with  which  he  was  faced,  Caligula  was  compelled 

'  On  the  subject  of  this  expedition  the  ancients  have  handed 
down  to  us  a  story  which  may  be  described  as  a  caricature  too 
absurd  to  be  taken  seriously.  Cf.  Suet.,  Cal.,  46.  If  this  story  is 
true  the  prince  was  much  less  mad  than  those  must  have  been 
who  obeved  him. 


The  Election  of  Claudius  i6i 

to  have  recourse  to  condemnations  for  IcBsa  maiestas, 
to  proscriptions  and  executions.  As  the  finances  were 
in  ruins,  he  proceeded  to  confiscations  and  new  forms 
of  oppression  of  every  sort.  The  rabble  of  Rome, 
dazzled  by  his  prodigality,  supported  him,  but  in  the 
imperial  family,  in  the  senate,  among  the  officers  of 
the  prsetorian  guard  and  of  the  army,  and  generally 
among  the  upper  and  middle  classes,  disgust  and 
aversion  rapidly  increased.  Rome  was  not  yet  ripe 
for  Asiatic  despotism.  The  excesses  and  eccentricities 
of  his  extemporized  tyranny  reawakened  republican 
sentiments  everywhere,  even  among  the  prastorians 
who  were  charged  with  his  personal  safety,  and  on 
January  24,  41,  he  was  assassinated  by  a  certain 
Cassius  Chcerea,  a  prastorian  tribune,  in  one  of  the  cor- 
ridors of  his  palace  as  the  result  of  a  conspiracy  in 
which  persons  of  considerable  importance  were  con- 
cerned. 

41.  The  Election  of  Claudius  (Jan.  24-25,41  A.D.). 
On  the  news  of  Caligula's  death  the  senate  met, 
honoured  Chasrea  and  his  accomplices  with  the  ancient 
title  of  "Restorers  of  Liberty, "  and  proceeded  to  dis- 
cuss what  was  to  be  done.  This  time  the  party  which 
desired  to  abolish  the  principate  and  restore  the  old 
republic  was  more  numerous  than  it  had  been  on  the 
occasion  of  the  deaths  of  Augustus  and  of  Tiberius. 
The  violence  and  extravagance  of  Caligula  had  re- 
awakened in  many  minds  the  latent  hatred  of  the  new 
regime.  But  could  the  senate,  weakened,  discredited, 
divided  as  it  was,  govern  the  empire  itself  without  a 
prince?  Many,  however  reluctantly,  doubted  the 
possibility  of  this.  On  the  other  hand  if  an  emperor 
was  a  necessity,  it  was  not  easy  to  find  one.  Of  the 
family  of  Augustus,  Claudius,  regarded  as  imbecile 


l62  Caligula  and  Claudius 

and  incapable,  alone  remained,  for  Tiberius,  the  son  of 
Drusus,  was  now  also  dead.  It  appears  that  several 
senators  more  or  less  openly  became  candidates  for 
the  vacant  dignity.  If,  however,  the  influence  of 
members  of  the  Augustan  family  was  now  question- 
able and  uncertain,  how  was  a  senator  unknown  to  the 
provinces  and  the  army  to  govern  the  empire  without 
the  prestige  of  that  family  which  had  been  prominent 
and  powerful  for  so  many  years  ?  It  is  not  surprising 
that  the  senate  spent  two  days  in  discussions  which 
reached  no  conclusion.  While  these  discussions  were 
going  on,  however,  the  soldiers  of  the  praetorian  guard, 
scouring  the  imperial  palace,  discovered  the  imbecile 
Claudius  in  a  corner  where  he  had  hidden  himself  in 
terror.  Recognizing  in  him  the  brother  of  Germani- 
cus,  they  acclaimed  him  as  emperor.  It  was  a  solu- 
tion, for  an  energetic  decision,  even  if  lacking  in 
prudence,  is  often  worth  more  than  the  most  prudent 
hesitations.  The  senate,  not  knowing  what  to  decide, 
accepted  and  ratified  the  solution  of  the  problem  which 
the  praetorians  offered  on  the  point  of  a  sword.  Clau- 
dius, the  imbecile,  was  emperor. 

42 .  The  First  Three  Years  of  the  Reign  of  Claudius : 
his  Merits  and  his  Weaknesses  (41-43  A.D.).  Tiber- 
ius Claudius  Germanicus  was  born  at  Lugdunum 
(Lyon)  in  10  B.C.  His  parents  were  Drusus  and 
Antonia,  daughter  of  Mark  Antony  the  triumvir. 
He  was  therefore  the  younger  brother  of  Germanicus. 
He  was  not  an  imbecile,  as  he  was  said  to  be,  and  as  he 
appeared  to  many  who  judged  him  superficially.  He 
was  on  the  contrary  an  excellent  Greek  scholar,  a 
good  speaker,  a  studious  and  erudite  person  by  no 
means  wanting  in  originality  and  acumen.  He  had, 
in  fact,  quite  enough  ability  to  make  a  figure  in  the 


First  Three  Years  of  the  Reign  of  Claudius  163 

world  beside  the  other  and  more  illustrious  members 
of  his  family,  but  unfortunately  his  brilliant  qualities 
were  obscured  by  strange  lapses  and  weaknesses.  His 
mother  described  him  as  "a  man  half  made"  and 
perhaps  it  is  the  best  description  that  can  be  given  of 
him.  His  timidity  and  gaucherie  were  incredible;  he 
was  quite  unable  to  make  himself  respected ;  his  slaves 
and  freedmen  treated  him  as  if  they  were  the  masters 
and  he  did  not  dare  to  protest.  He  was  often  the  slave 
of  the  women  with  whom  he  lived  and  had  no  idea 
how  to  behave  in  society,  often  saying  things  which 
were  extremely  mat  a  propos,  partly  from  shyness  and 
partly  from  a  kind  of  boyish  inattention.  This  must 
have  been  the  reason  why  Augustus  kept  him  in  the 
background.  He  had  therefore  lived  a  solitary  life 
almost  entirely  in  the  company  of  slaves  and  freed- 
men, banned  by  all  that  was  smart,  polished,  or  aris- 
tocratic in  society,  and  entirely  occupied  with  his 
favourite  historical  and  philological  studies.  He  had 
been  a  pupil  of  Livy  and  devoted  himself  to  writing 
history  and  to  spelling  reform,  at  the  same  time  not 
denying  himself  the  pleasures  of  love  and  of  the  table, 
for  Claudius,  if  we  may  believe  the  ancients,  was  al- 
most brutishly  gluttonous  and  sensual.  It  is  not 
surprising  that  among  the  Roman  aristocracy  such  a 
person  should  have  passed  for  an  imbecile,  though  he 
was  not  wanting  in  the  intelligence  of  a  scholar  and  a 
man  of  letters,  he  lacked  firmness,  courage,  and  self- 
control,  that  indefinable  quality  without  which  a  man 
cannot  command  the  respect  of  others  or  take  the  lead, 
however  clever  he  may  be. 

Being  a  man  of  intelligence,  a  Claudius,  and  an 
archaeologist  into  the  bargain,  the  new  emperor  was 
not  long  in  bringing  back  the  government  to  the  great 


164  Caligula  and  Claudius 

tradition  of  Augustus  and  Tiberius.  Once  more  the 
senate  was  frequently  convoked  to  decide  even  on 
matters  directly  under  imperial  control.  He  honoured 
the  magistrates  in  the  old  fashion,  often  summoned 
the  comitia  to  exercise  their  ancient  electoral  and 
legislative  functions,  limited  the  grants  of  citizenship 
which  had  been  so  lavish  under  Caligula  and  revoked 
those  which  had  been  made  to  provincials  who  had 
not  learned  to  speak  Latin.  He  laid  aside  all  personal 
pomp,  affected  a  desire  to  be  regarded  as  a  mere 
senator,  declared  that  he  would  not  appoint  any  one 
to  the  senate  whose  great  grandfathers  at  least  had 
not  enjoyed  Roman  citizenship,  and  re-established  the 
cherished  distinctions  of  the  orders  which  Caligula 
had  purposely  confused.  He  repressed  the  disorders 
of  the  populace  at  public  spectacles  where  under 
Caligula  discipline  had  been  much  relaxed,  and  did  his 
best  to  re-establish  the  finances  on  a  sound  basis  and 
to  restore  the  ancient  forms  of  religion. 

43.  Claudius  and  his  Freedmen — the  Conspiracy 
of  42  A.D.  Thus  the  beginnings  of  the  new  reign 
were  excellent.  Rome,  it  seemed  would  again  be 
able  to  breathe  freely!  But  instead  there  began  al- 
most at  once  a  new  period  of  turbulence  and  disorder. 
In  spite  of  all  his  efforts  Claudius  failed  to  conquer 
the  hostility  shown  him  by  one  part — and  that  the 
strongest — of  the  Roman  aristocracy.  The  new 
prince  had  been  injured  above  all  by  the  manner  of  his 
election.  Claudius  was  the  first  emperor  to  be  im- 
posed on  the  senate  by  the  military,  by  an  open  breach 
of  the  law,  and  the  nobility  were  all  the  more  unwilling 
to  pardon  the  innovation  because  the  coup  d'etat, 
by  which  the  emperor  had  profited  had  come  at  a 
moment  when  the  aristocracy  was  fondly  imagining 


Clattdius  and  his  Freedmen  165 

that  the}^  would  reconquer  all  their  ancient  privileges 
and  when  more  than  one  of  their  leaders  had  hopes  of 
at  once  seizing  the  empire  for  himself.  The  weakness 
of  the  prince  aggravated  the  discontent  which  had 
been  thus  aroused.  Claudius  might,  it  was  true, 
govern  in  the  traditional  way,  but  he  did  not  surround 
himself  with  knights  and  senators.  On  the  contrary 
he  kept  about  his  person  the  servants  and  companions 
of  his  youth  and  early  manhood,  that  is  to  say,  his 
slaves  and,  still  more,  his  freedmen.  In  this  way  these 
men  gradually  secured  an  influence  and  an  ascendancy 
which  deeply  offended  the  aristocracy,  the  more  so 
because  Claudius  did  not  know  how  to  keep  them  in 
their  place  and  allowed  them  to  flaunt  their  power  and 
insolence  by  his  side.  Among  his  freedmen  were  some 
of  much  intelligence  and  capacity  who  were  of  great 
assistance  to  him  in  the  business  of  government.  Such 
were  Polybius,  Narcissus,  Harpocrates,  Pallas,  and 
even  the  eunuch  Pasides.  But  though  these  freed- 
men helped  Claudius  to  rule  according  to  the  great 
traditions  of  the  aristocratic  republic,  the  Roman 
nobility  could  not  endure  that  on  occasions  of  public 
ceremonial  Polybius  should  appear  with  the  consuls, 
that  Harpocrates  should  traverse  Rome  in  a  litter  and 
be  the  giver  of  spectacles,  that  Narcissus  and  Pallas 
should  receive  the  insignia  of  qusestor  and  prsetor  by 
the  wish  of  Claudius  who  proposed  these  honours  in 
the  senate.  The  jealousy  felt  by  the  old  and  decadent 
order  for  new  men  and  the  exclusive  spirit  of  the 
ancient  Roman  world  were  reviving,  and  well  as 
Claudius  governed,  he  governed  in  such  a  way  as  to 
make  himself  ridiculous  and  lacked  all  prestige  and 
authority. 

This  singular  contradiction  explains  the  great  con- 


1 66  Caligula  and  Claudius 

spiracy  of  42,  the  object  of  which  was  to  procure  the 
deposition  of  the  emperor,  who  was  the  creature  of  the 
praetorians  at  Rome,  through  the  instrumentality  of 
the  legions  of  Dalmatia.  The  leader  of  the  conspira- 
tors at  Rome  appears  to  have  been  a  senator  named 
Annius  Vinicianus  who  on  the  death  of  Caligula  was 
said  to  have  put  himself  forward  as  a  possible  emperor. 
Furius  Camillus  Scribonianus,  the  governor  of  Dal- 
matia, who  had  three  legions  at  his  disposal,  acted 
with  him.  The  good  sense  of  the  soldiers  and  their 
attachment  to  the  Julio-Claudian  house  defeated  this 
movement.  The  legions,  led  away  for  a  moment,  soon 
repented  and  slew  their  traitorous  general;  but  the 
attempt  was  so  serious  and  on  such  a  scale  that  on  the 
first  news  of  the  mutiny,  Claudius  had  been  on  the  point 
of  abdicating.  He  recovered  himself  and  pardoned 
the  soldiers,  but  Rome  was  once  more  devastated  by 
one  of  the  storms  of  judicial  savagery  envenomed 
by  private  feuds  and  interested  accusations  which  from 
time  to  time  deluged  the  capital  with  blood. 

44.  The  Conquest  of  Britain  (43  A.D.).  The  New 
Policy  in  the  Provinces  and  the  New  Social  Legislation. 
This  conspiracy  left  behind  it  a  legacy  of  terror  in  the 
mind  of  the  emperor.  Claudius  surrounded  himself 
with  guards.  No  one  could  now  come  near  him  with- 
out being  personally  searched.  No  one  could  enter- 
tain him  without  having  his  house  minutely  examined 
beforehand.  But,  if  the  government  of  Claudius  was 
weak  it  did  not  lack  a  certain  determination  (due 
either  to  the  intelligence  of  the  prince,  to  the  ambition 
of  his  freedmen  or  to  both)  to  struggle  against  its 
weakness  and  to  strengthen  itself  by  attempting  great 
reforms  and  important  enterprises.  A  British  chief 
driven  from  his  country  by  civil  war  had  come  to 


Tlie  Conquest  of  Britain  167 

Rome  and  for  some  time  had  been  trying  to  persuade 
the  Roman  government  to  invade  the  great  island. 
Was  this  chief  clever  enough  to  persuade  Claudius 
that  the  undertaking  would  be  easy  ?  Or  did  Claudius, 
in  the  first  moment  of  his  recovery  from  the  shock  of 
the  Dalmatian  conspiracy,  understand  that  what  had 
injured  him  above  all  was  the  fact  that  he,  the  son  of 
Drusus  and  the  brother  of  Germanicus,  was  without 
military  renown?  However  that  may  be,  the  fact 
remains  that  in  the  year  43  (and  according  to  the 
historians  on  Claudius's  own  personal  initiative)  a 
great  army  consisting  of  several  legions  landed  in 
Britain  and  successfully  commenced  the  enterprise 
which  Cassar  had  barely  attempted  and  of  which 
Augustus  and  Tiberius  had  deliberately  repudiated 
all  idea.^  The  moment  had  been  well  chosen.  The 
population  of  the  southern  regions  of  Britain  was  at 
that  time  weakened  by  wars  and  revolutions,  and  the 
legions,  in  the  course  of  a  rapid  and  successful  cam- 
paign, were  able  to  conquer,  at  any  rate  for  the 
moment,  a  great  part  of  the  island.  Claudius  himself 
went  to  Britain,  crossed  the  Thames  at  the  head  of  his 
legions  and  for  the  first  tiine  in  his  life  was  present  at  a 
military  operation,  the  result  of  which  was  the  occupa- 
tion by  his  army  of  Camulodunun  (Colchester).  He 
then  returned  to  Gaul,  declared  Britain  a  Roman 
province  and  came  back  to  Rome  where  the  senate 
conferred  great  honours  upon  him. 

The  conquest  of  Britain  was  in  truth  only  begun. 
Ten  more  years  of  sanguinary  fighting  were  needed 
before  some  parts  of  the  island  at  least  could  be  called 
Roman.  But  in  Rome  and  Italy,  where  the  public 
had  for  long  been  casting  covetous  eyes  on  Britain  as 

■  Cf.  Strab.,  ii.,  5,  8.     Tac,  Agr.,  13. 


l68  Caligula  and  Claudius 

the  natural  complement  of  Gaul,  Claudius's  bold 
move  gave  great  satisfaction.  In  the  same  year  Lycia, 
in  which  disturbances  had  broken  out,  was  annexed 
to  the  empire  and  attached  to  the  prefecture  of  Pam- 
phylia.  Claudius,  in  fact,  was  initiating  a  vigorous 
foreign  iDolicy,  and  for  a  moment  it  seemed  that  his 
government  might  derive  from  these  successes  some- 
thing of  the  strength  and  the  prestige  of  which  it  stood 
in  need.  Between  43  and  48  there  ensued  a  period 
in  which,  though  it  made  mistakes  it  shov/ed  great 
activity  and  intelligence,  and  even  a  new  and  increas- 
ing largeness  of  view  both  in  foreign  and  in  domestic 
policy.'  In  this  unusual  broad-mindedness,  must  we 
not  recognize  the  influence  of  the  freedmen,  intelligent 
persons  who  were  naturally  very  little  constrained  by 
ancient  Roman  tradition?  It  is  a  probable  explana- 
tion, but  in  any  case,  the  policy  of  Claudius,  though 
in  its  main  lines  it  remained  faithful  to  the  Roman 
tradition,  nevertheless  introduced  many  administra- 
tive and  judicial  novelties  which  the  times  required. 
In  46  the  emperor,  abandoning  the  purely  exclusive 
and  restrictive  system  followed  by  Augustus  and 
Tiberius,  granted  Roman  citizenship  to  whole  tribes  of 
the  inhabitants  of  the  Alps,  such  as  the  Ananes  in  the 
Trentino,  the  Tulliassi,  and  the  Sindones.  '^  Two  years 
later,  in  48,  he  openly  affronted  in  the  senate  the  oppo- 
sition of  the  old  intransigent  spirit  of  Roman  nation- 
alism by  securing  the  concession  of  the  ius  honorum 
(that  is,  the  right  to  be  made  senators)  in  its  entirety 
to  the  rich  men  belonging  to  Transalpine  Gaul,  in  the 
first  instance  to  the  ^dui,  who  were  already  citizens.^ 

'  Cf.  a  I.  L.,  v.,  5050. 

^  On  the  text  of  the  speech  made  in  the  senate  by  the  prince 
on  this  occasion  cf.  C.  I.  L.,  xiii.,  1668;  Tac,  Ann.,  xi.,  24. 


Messalina — History  and  Legend        169 

This  was  the  first  time  that  this  right  was  explicitly 
given  to  the  upper  classes  of  a  province,  and  it  is  not 
unlikely  that  Claudius  was  moved  to  take  this  bold 
step  not  only  by  a  desire  to  reinforce  the  senatorial 
aristocracy  but  also  by  the  expedition  against  Britain. 
As  he  wished  to  conquer  Britain  he  had  to  make  every 
effort  to  secure  the  loyalty  of  Gaul,  which  was  the 
base  of  his  operations  against  the  island.  Many  indeed 
were  the  changes  of  which  this  reform  was  destined 
to  be  the  seed !  We  may  note  in  passing  certain  legal 
reforms  due  to  Claudius  in  which  for  the  first  time 
appears  something  of  a  universalizing  spirit  in  marked 
contrast  with  the  hitherto  narrow  and  formal  charac- 
ter of  the  Roman  law. 

45.  Messalina — History  and  Legend.  In  the  year 
47  Claudius  assumed  the  office  of  censor,  which  for 
many  years  had  been  in  abeyance,  and  carried  out  its 
duties  in  scrupulous  accordance  with  the  tradition  of 
the  old  republic.  He  began  by  issuing  many  notcB 
censoricB,  by  expelling  unworthy  senators,  forcing 
indigent  senators  to  resign,  and  filling  the  gaps  by 
creating  new  patrician  families.'  On  the  proposal  of 
one  of  the  consuls  with  the  assent  of  a  majority  of  the 
assembly,  he  received  the  title  of  pater  senatus.  Rome 
should  have  been  content  at  last !  On  the  contrary, 
however,  neither  good  government  nor  the  senate's 
applause  could  allay  the  opposition  which  persistently 
smouldered  and  ever}^  now  and  then  flared  up  in  Rome. 
Claudius  might  conquer  provinces  and  make  excellent 
laws  but  Rome  could  not  tolerate  that  the  emperor, 
who  should  have  been  supreme  in  all  things,  was 
unable  to  secure  obedience  in  his  own  house  from  his 

'  CJ.  Tac,  Ann.,  xi.,  13;  xii.,  52;  and  C.  I.  L.,  iii.,  6074;  xiv., 
3607. 


170  Caligula  and  Claudius 

freedmen  and  his  wife.  The  conduct  of  the  empress 
was  another  and  equally  serious  cause  of  discontent. 
Claudius  had  first  married  a  certain  Plautia  Urgula- 
nilla  whom  he  had  had  to  repudiate,  secondly  ^lia 
Pastina  whom  he  also  divorced,  and,  thirdly  and 
lastly,  a  young  lady  of  great  beauty  and  very  ancient 
lineage.  Classical  historians  have  described  Valeria 
Messalina  as  licentious  beyond  belief,  as  cynical,  cruel, 
and  greedy.  But  if  she  was  all  this,  it  is  difficult  to 
explain  some  of  her  characteristic  acts,  and  impossible 
to  understand  not  only  why  her  presence  was  tolerated 
so  long  in  a  house  like  that  of  Claudius,  but  also  why 
she  enjoyed  (as  she  did)  no  small  consideration  among 
the  Roman  aristocracy  of  her  time,  which  was  cer- 
tainly not  a  society  of  abandoned  men  and  women,  and 
why,  finally,  she  never  lacked,  up  to  the  disaster  which 
finally  overtook  her,  the  friendship,  the  affection,  and 
the  help  of  one  of  the  most  important  of  the  Vestals 
against  whose  good  name  no  ancient  writer  has  dared 
to  suggest  a  shadow  of  suspicion. 

A  more  balanced  judgment  will  conclude  that 
Messalina  was  neither  a  Livia  nor  an  Antonia,  but 
that,  at  the  worst,  she  may  have  been  a  Julia.  That 
is  to  say,  she  was  a  woman  like  so  many  others  of 
the  Roman  aristocracy  of  the  day,  young,  beautiful, 
capricious,  frivolous,  fond  of  pleasiire  and  luxury  and 
sumptuous  entertainments,  prone  to  confoimd  the 
affairs  of  her  family  with  those  of  the  empire,  and 
rash  in  presuming  on  her  husband's  weakness,  even 
in  matters  which  concerned  the  State  alone.  This  led 
her  to  interfere  in  public  affairs  in  the  way  women  will, 
and  thus  too  often  the  weakness  of  Claudius  allowed 
her  likes  and  dislikes  to  vitiate  correct  principles  of 
public  administration  and  the  strict   observance  of 


Conspiracy  of  Messalijia  and  Siluis    171 

justice.  Too  often  she  took  it  upon  herself  to  violate 
the  leges  sumptuaricB  which  Claudius  had  re-estab- 
lished, and  too  often,  also,  it  appears  that  she  abused 
her  position  in  order  to  make  money ;  for,  according  to 
the  ancients,  she  was  both  very  avaricious  and  very 
prodigal.  In  Rome,  however,  there  still  prevailed  the 
strong  Latin  tradition  against  the  open  participation 
of  women  in  public  business,  and  public  opinion 
required  that  the  emperor's  consort  should  be  a 
matron  who,  like  Li  via,  was  a  model  of  all  the  ancient 
Italian  virtues.  Though  a  section  at  least  of  the 
nobility,  being  inclined  to  modern  manners,  was  in- 
dulgent to  Messalina,  the  Roman  middle  class  thought 
it  outrageous  that  so  scandalous  an  example  should 
be  set  in  high  places. 

46.  The  Conspiracy  of  Messalina  and  Silius  (48 
A.D.).  The  weakness  of  Claudius,  his  perpetual 
terrors,  the  hesitation  and  uncertainty  of  which  they 
were  the  cause,  the  excesses  and  the  financial  corrup- 
tion of  Messalina,  the  peculation  and  the  presimiption 
of  the  imperial  freedmen,  nullified  the  effect  of  all  the 
zeal  and  energy  with  which  he  conducted  the  affairs 
of  State  and  the  wise  and  sagacious  legislation  by 
which  he  sought  to  remedy  abuses.  Discontent  grew 
apace  in  the  senate  and  among  the  people.  Everyone 
cursed  Messalina  and  the  freedmen,  and  laughed  at 
Claudius.  Among  the  senators  the  number  grew  of 
those  who  hoped  to  be  able  to  take  the  emperor's 
place.  Every  day  there  were  rumours  of  conspiracies 
and  of  imminent  revolts  among  the  troops,  and  every 
now  and  then  there  were  popular  outbreaks.  In  46, 
there  had  even  been  a  plot  the  leading  spirit  in  which 
was  no  less  a  person  than  Asinius  Callus,  half-brother 
to  Drusus  the  son  of  Tiberius,  who  had  persuaded 


172  Caligula  and  Claudius 

himself  that  he  was  strong  enough,  with  the  support  of 
the  popular  discontent,  to  deprive  Claudius  of  the 
empire.  This  atmosphere  of  discontent,  conspiracy, 
and  menace  added  to  the  terrors  of  Claudius,  who  was 
no  lionheart,  and  made  him  more  than  ever  dependent 
on  his  freedmcn  whose  power  grew  in  direct  propor- 
tion to  their  master's  fear.  Little  by  little  there  came 
about  a  strange  and  paradoxical  situation  such  as 
had  never  before  been  seen  at  Rome.  It  was  as  if  the 
Romans  did  not  know  whether  they  wanted  or  did 
not  want  their  rulers.  These  rulers  had  done  excellent 
things,  but  they  were  threatened  on  every  side  and 
had  fallen  into  extreme  discredit.  It  looked  as  if  they 
might  fall  at  any  moment;  every  morning  the  cata- 
strophe was  expected  to  come  before  night,  and  many 
were  prepared  to  take  up  the  succession.  Yet  the 
government  successfully  resisted  every  conspiracy 
against  it  and — with  difficulty — it  went  on.  The  truth 
was  that,  if  between  the  time  of  Augustus  and  that  of 
Claudius  the  government  had  weakened,  the  opposi- 
tion was  also  much  less  strong  and  energetic  than  it 
had  been  in  the  days  of  Tiberius.  The  aristocratic 
cliques  which  attacked  the  government  of  Claudius 
were  at  variance  among  themselves,  were  unskilful, 
feeble,  and  rash  rather  than  bold.  Public  discontent 
spent  itself  in  speeches;  but  the  army  remained  faith- 
ful to  the  son  of  Drusus.  Thus  the  government  was 
able — with  difficulty — to  limp  on  its  way. 

In  48  and  49,  however,  a  new  danger  arose — this 
time  from  within.  We  have  now  arrived  at  the  most 
startling  episode  in  Claudius's  history.  Everyone  has 
heard  how  Messalina  fell  in  love  with  a  young  senator 
named  Silius,  how  she  was  not  content  that  he  should 
be  her  lover  but  would  marry  him  although  she  was  the 


Conspiracy  of  Messalina  and  Silius    173 

wife  of  Claudius,  how  in  49,  while  her  husband  was  at 
Ostia,  she  solemnly  celebrated  her  nuptials  with  Silius, 
carrying  out  all  the  religious  rites  in  the  presence  of  a 
horrified  and  alarmed  people,  and  how  finally,  when 
Claudius  was  informed,  he  ordered  her  to  put  an  end 
to  her  life.  Tacitus,  Suetonius,  and  Dio  Cassius  agree 
in  this  account,  which  is  repeated  by  almost  all  the 
modern  historians  of  Rome,  great  and  small.  Yet,  in 
the  form  in  which  the  ancient  writers  have  handed  it 
down  to  us,  this  story  is  incomprehensible.  To  explain 
such  an  outrageous  incident,  we  should  have  to  suppose 
not  only  that  Messalina  was  mad  herself  (which  is 
possible  enough),  but  also  that  many  other  people, 
including  Silius  himself,  all  the  magistrates  who  met 
together  to  carry  out  the  marriage  ceremonies,  and  all 
those  who  assisted  at  this  sacrilegious  travesty  were 
equally  demented.  This  makes  a  quite  improbable 
number  of  lunatics,  and  no  one  who  knows  the  super- 
stitious veneration  of  the  Romans  for  all  ceremonial, 
especially  ceremonial  of  a  religious  character,  will 
believe  in  it  for  a  moment.  If  Messalina  and  Silius 
publicly  solemnized  their  marriage  with  the  venerable 
rites  of  their  religion,  this  must  mean  that  the}^  were 
in  a  position  to  do  so,  that  is  to  say,  that  Claudius  and 
Messalina  had  been  divorced.  This  supposition  is 
indirectly  confirmed  by  Suetonius  who  says  that 
Claudius  had  assigned  a  dowry  to  be  given  to  Messa- 
lina on  this  marriage.'  Now,  if  Claudius  assigned  a 
dowry  to  Messalina  he  must  have  consented  to  the 
new  marriage  and  therefore  have  divorced  his  wife 
and  handed  her  over  to  Silius — an  arrangement  which, 
as  we  know,  was  anything  but  uncommon  at  that  time 
among  the  Roman  aristocracy. 
'  Suet.,  Claud.,  26  and  29. 


174  Caligula  and  Claudius 

Claudius  then  had  ceded  Messalina  to  Silius  and, 
therefore,  had  divorced  her.  But  why?  What  was 
behind  the  divorce  and  the  new  marriage?  We  can 
only  answer  this  question  by  conjectures,  the  most 
probable  of  which  seems  to  us  to  be  that  made  by  an 
Italian  writer  Umberto  Silvagni,  more  especially  if  a 
few  necessary  modifications  are  made  in  it.'  Silvagni 
observes  that  Silius,  the  new  husband  of  Messalina, 
belonged  to  a  noble  family  celebrated  for  its  devotion 
to  the  party  of  Germanicus.  Silius's  father  had  not 
merely  been  one  of  Germanicus's  most  intimate 
friends,  but  owing  to  the  intrigues  of  Sejanus,  had  been 
charged  with  high  treason,  and  had  been  obliged  to 
commit  suicide.  His  mother,  Sosia  Galla,  was  a 
devoted  friend  of  Agrippina,  the  wife  of  Germanicus, 
and  for  this  friendship  had  been  condemned  to  exile. 
Starting  from  these  considerations,  Silvagni  reaches 
the  hypothesis  that  the  marriage  of  Silius  and  Messa- 
lina in  its  turn  concealed  a  conspiracy  the  object  of 
which  was  to  oust  Claudius  and  put  in  his  place  Silius 
who  was  an  important  personage  and  consul-desig- 
nate for  the  ensuing  year.  The  sequence  of  events 
might  then  be  reconstructed  somewhat  as  follows. 
Messalina  feared  that  Claudius's  government  would 
inevitably  be  upset  one  day  or  another  as  the  result 
of  some  revolt  or  conspiracy.  She  was  not  unaware 
that  she  was  much  more  hated  than  Claudius,  and  that 
if  he  were  overturned  by  any  successful  rebellion  she 
would  afterwards  herself  be  eliminated.  There  was 
only  one  way  of  meeting  this  peril,  and  that  was  for 
her  to  remove  Claudius,  and  herself  to  take  the  initia- 
tive in  substituting  another  emperor  for  him.    Such  a 

'  Silvagni,  L'impero  e  le  donne  dei  CcBsari,  Torino,  1909,  pp. 
338  ff. 


Conspiracy  of  Messalina  and  Silius    175 

substitute  could  not  be  found  in  the  family  of  Augustus 
for  in  that  family  there  was  only  one  other  male  person, 
namely,  Britannicus,  her  own  son  by  Claudius,  who 
was  at  that  time  a  little  boy  of  seven.  She  had  there- 
fore to  direct  her  choice  elsewhere  and,  as  the  troops 
were  so  much  attached  to  the  memory  of  Drusus  and 
Germanicus,  the  best  she  could  do  was  to  select  a 
family  famous  for  its  devotion  to  this  branch  of  the 
Claudian  house  for  which  it  had  shed  its  blood.  By 
marrying  Silius  and  making  him  emperor,  she  would 
at  once  be  enabled  to  resimie  her  place  as  empress  by 
the  side  of  a  stronger  ruler  than  Claudius. 

Some  such  hypothesis  as  this  seems  alone  capable  of 
supplying  a  reasonable  explanation  of  this  extravagant 
episode  in  Roman  history.  And  if  it  is  a  true  explana- 
tion it  places  beyond  doubt  that  of  all  the  plots  against 
Claudius  that  of  Silius  was  the  most  dangerous.  It 
was  hatched  in  the  emperor's  own  house  by  an  intelli- 
gent, energetic,  and  unscrupulous  woman,  who  had  an 
enormous  influence  over  Claudius,  who  was  feared  by 
the  most  powerful  of  his  freedmen,  and  who  had  friends, 
clients,  and  pensioners  in  every  department  of  State. 
It  is  not  surprising  that  Messalina  was  able  to  come 
to  an  understanding  with  many  high  officers  of  State 
and  influential  personages,  or  that  she  could  lay 
her  plans  by  patient  and  skilful  manoeuvres  without 
raising  the  emperor's  suspicions  and  without  any  of 
his  faithful  freedmen  daring  to  put  him  on  his  guard. 
Who  could  have  predicted  the  issue  of  the  struggle 
between  the  weak  and  discredited  emperor  and  the 
energetic  and  all  powerful  empress?  There  was,  how- 
ever, one  possibility  of  difficulty  and  danger  in  this 
cunningly  contrived  plan.  How  was  Claudius  to  be 
persiiaded  to  divorce  his  wife  without  rousing  his 


1/6  Caligula  and  Claicdius 

suspicions?  On  this  point  also  the  ancient  historians 
are  very  obscure.  Suetonius  seems  to  say  that  Clau- 
dius was  induced  to  sign  the  deed  granting  Messalina 
a  dowry  for  her  second  marriage  by  a  trick, '  and  from 
the  very  confused  account  given  by  Tacitus,  it  would 
appear  that  no  one  was  more  surprised  than  Claudius 
when  he  learned  that  Messalina  was  no  longer  his  wife. 
However  this  may  be,  Messalina  contrived  to  make 
her  husband  sign  the  letters  of  divorce  and,  as  soon 
as  the  divorce  was  secured,  hurried  to  Rome  to  cele- 
brate her  marriage  with  Silius,  which  was  to  be 
immediately  followed  by  the  deposition  of  Claudius.^ 
The  plan  was  bold,  but  it  might  have  succeeded  if  it 
had  been  supported  by  the  freedmen  of  the  emperor, 
and  we  know  that  they  hesitated  up  to  the  very  last 
moment.  Claudius  was  at  Ostia.  Messalina  had 
already  celebrated  her  marriage  at  Rome  with  great 
pomp,  as  if  to  present  the  new  master  to  the  people. 
Claudius's  most  faithful  freedmen  could  not  yet 
make  up  their  minds  and  remained  uncertain.  It 
was  not  till  near  nightfall  that  Narcissus  decided  for 
Claudius  against  Messalina  and  hastened  to  Ostia. 
We  do  not  know,  and  shall  never  know,  what  he  said 
to  Claudius  or  what  proofs  he  gave  of  the  conspiracy. 

'  Suet.,  Claud.,  29:  ...  inductus,  quasi  de  industria  simulare- 
tur,  ad  avertendum  transferendumqiie  periculum,  quod  imminere 
ipsi  per  quadam  ostenta  por  tender  etur. 

^  That  there  was  in  fact  behind  this  marriage  a  political  con- 
spiracy to  change  the  emperor  is  also  hinted  by  the  very  romantic 
account  given  by  Tacitus.  Cf.  Ann.,  xi.,  26:  se  {Silium)  ccelibem, 
orhum,  nuptiis  et  adoptando  Britannico  paratum;  mansuram 
eamdem  Messalina  potentiam,  addila  securitate  .  .  .;  xi.,  30: 
ni  proper e  agis,  tenet  Urhem  maritus  .  .  .;  xi.,  31:  satis  constat 
CO  pavore  offusum  Claudium,  ut  identidem  interrogaret;  an  ipse 
imperii  polens  ?  an  Silius  privatus  esset  ? 


Last   Years  and  Death  of  Clatidms     177 

It  is  certain,  however,  that  Claudius,  thoroughly  dis- 
mayed, returned  precipitately  to  Rome,  and  that  once 
again  there  burst  forth  one  of  those  storms  of  judicial 
vengeance  which  from  time  to  time  filled  the  capital 
with  bloodshed  and  mourning.  Silius,  Messalina,  and 
a  great  number  of  their  friends  and  adherents  were 
charged  with  high  treason,  conspiracy,  adultery,  and  a 
hundred  other  crimes;  some  committed  suicide  and 
the  rest  perished  by  the  hands  of  the  executioner. 

47.  The  Last  Years  and  Death  of  Claudius  (48-54 
A.D.).  Claudius  was  left  a  widower.  While  still 
suffering  from  the  first  shock  of  the  catastrophe,  he 
made  a  speech  to  the  troops  in  the  course  of  which 
he  declared  that,  after  such  a  melancholy  experience,  he 
would  never  marry  again.  But  Claudius's  intentions, 
even  when  most  solemnly  announced,  were  never  taken 
very  seriously.  The  old  emperor  was  immediately 
surrounded  by  a  new  series  of  plots  and  intrigues  the 
object  of  which  was  to  make  him  again  enter  the 
bonds  of  wedlock,  for  everyone  knew  that  whoever 
succeeded  in  giving  him  a  new  wife  would  through  her 
acquire  great  influence  over  him.  The  disastrous  end 
of  Messalina,  however,  had  not  been  without  its  uses. 
The  public  was  nauseated  b}^  the  many  scandals  and 
disorders  and  by  the  social  chaos  of  recent  days. 
There  was  a  universal  cry  for  a  more  serious,  a  stronger, 
and  a  more  reputable  government.  Even  in  the 
entourage  of  Claudius,  among  the  most  powerful  of  his 
freedmen  there  were  some  intelligent  persons  who 
understood  that  it  was  impossible  to  irritate  public 
opinion  beyond  a  certain  point  and  that  Rome  must 
be  satisfied  by  the  choice  of  a  consort  for  the  prince 
who  would  cause  Messalina  to  be  forgotten  and  would, 
to  some  extent  at  least,  remind  the  Romans  of  the 


178  Caligula  atid  Claudius 

revered  figure  of  Li  via.  The  leader  of  the  party  hold- 
ing this  view  seems  to  have  been  the  freedman  Pallas 
whose  choice  fell  upon  Agrippina,  the  daughter  of 
Germanicus  and  Agrippina  the  elder,  whom  Caligula 
had  exiled  and  whom  Claudius  had  recalled. 

Agrippina  was  then  about  thirty-three  years  of  age. 
She  was  the  widow  of  Cn.  Domitius  Ahenobarbus  by 
whom  she  had  had  a  son — the  future  Nero.  She  was 
a  well-educated,  clever,  and  energetic  woman  of  un- 
blernished  character,  the  very  type  of  the  antique 
Roman  matron,  simple,  active,  and  parsimonious.  As 
a  mother,  says  Tacitus,  she  was  trux  et  minax;  that  is 
to  say,  she  brought  up  her  son  in  the  ancient  severe 
manner  and  not  in  accordance  with  the  more  modern 
and  softer  notions  which  were  beginning  to  be  im- 
ported into  Roman  houses  from  the  teachings  of 
humanitarian  philosophers.  The  daughter  of  Ger- 
manicus might  well  be  at  last  the  empress  dreamed  of 
and  desired  by  the  Romans,  who  would  worthily  con- 
tinue the  tradition  of  Livia  and  restore  to  the  imperial 
authority  something  of  the  prestige  it  had  lost  owing 
to  the  scandals  of  recent  years. 

There  was,  however,  one  obstacle.  Claudius  was 
Agrippina's  uncle.  Marriage  between  an  uncle  and 
his  niece  was  not  absolutely  forbidden,  but  was  re- 
garded by  the  Romans  with  a  certain  distaste.  Pallas, 
however,  by  skilful  argument  and  action  was  able  not 
only  to  persuade  Claudius  but  to  remove  the  difficulty 
altogether,  and  the  senate  was  asked  by  its  special 
authorization  to  permit  the  marriage  between  Claudius 
and  Agrippina.  It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  choice 
was  a  happy  one  and  that  the  author  of  the  idea 
rendered  a  real  service  to  the  empire.  The  last  five 
years  of  Claudius's  reign  were  very  much  more  peace- 


Last    Years  and  Death  of  Claudius     179 

ful  and  fortunate  than  the  first  six,  and  this  was  due, 
at  least  in  part,  to  the  influence  of  Agrippina.  The 
marriage,  moreover,  came  at  a  favourable  moment. 
The  public  was  weary,  as  we  have  said,  of  scandals, 
disorders,  State  trials,  and  accusations.  The  parties,  or 
rather  the  cliques  and  coteries  which,  ever  since  the 
days  of  Augustus,  had  struggled  so  fiercely  in  the  senate 
and  in  the  bosom  of  the  imperial  family  itself  were  now 
exhausted.  On  every  side  the  one  desire  of  the  peo- 
ple was  for  a  little  rest.  And  Agrippina — energetic, 
intelligent,  and  virtuous — was  able  to  satisfy  these 
aspirations  as  far  as  was  possible  by  exercising  an 
influence  over  the  feeble  Claudius  which  was  as  great 
as  that  possessed  by  Messalina  but  much  more  bene- 
ficial, and  by  imparting  to  his  mind  something  of  the 
firmness  and  coherence  which  it  lacked.  There  is  no 
doubt  that  in  his  later  years  the  finances  were  better 
administered,  that  peculation  was  checked,  that  the 
arrogance  and  interference  of  the  freedmen  were  kept 
within  bounds,  and  that  treason  trials  and  con- 
demnations were  less  frequent.  Part  at  least  of  the 
credit  for  this  happy  change  is  due  to  Agrippina,  and 
this  is  sometimes  openly  admitted  and  more  fre- 
quently indirectly  admitted  by  the  very  historians 
who,  like  Tacitus,  have  bespattered  her  memory  with 
so  many  calumnies. 

Agrippina,  indeed,  soon  became  extremely  popular 
with  that  part  of  the  people  whose  only  desire  was  to 
be  governed  with  honesty  and  vigour,  and  who  had 
no  preconceived  hatred  or  inexorable  rancour  against 
the  family  of  Augustus.  There  can  be  no  other  ex- 
planation of  the  fact  that  the  senate  decreed  ex- 
traordinary honours  to  Agrippina.  such  as  even  Livia 
had  never  received.     She  was  authorized  to  drive  up 


i8o  Caligula  and  Claudius 

to  the  capitol  in  a  gilded  chariot  (carpentum)  like  that 
reserved  for  the  sole  use  of  the  priests  and  the  images 
of  the  gods.  During  her  lifetime  she  received  the 
title  of  Augusta,  and  her  name  was  given  to  the  town 
recently  founded  in  the  territory  of  the  Ubii  on  the 
Rhine,  which  was  destined  to  become  the  famous  city 
of  Cologne.  All  this  cannot  be  attributed  to  the 
servility  of  the  senate,  for,  servile  as  it  may  have  been, 
it  was  decidedly  hostile  to  the  imperial  house,  and 
Messalina,  who  was  much  more  ambitious  and  in- 
triguing than  Agrippina,  never  received  such  honours, 
which  were,  in  fact,  due  to  and  demanded  by  the  high 
opinion  which  the  public  had  formed  of  the  new 
empress.  Still  the  small  clique  in  the  senate  which 
hated  the  imperial  family  did  not  lay  down  their 
arms,  nor  were  the  ambitions  appeased  of  those  who 
had  hoped  to  overthrow  Claudius,  and  take  his  place. 
Indeed  the  ranks  of  this  party  were  swelled  by  the 
many  whose  opportunities  for  dishonest  gain  had  been 
restricted  by  the  greater  strictness  introduced  by 
Agrippina's  influence  into  the  management  of  the 
finances  of  the  State.  And  all  these,  while  in  the 
senate  they  acquiesced  in  the  decrees  proposed  in  her 
honour,  murmured  against  her  under  their  breath,  put 
the  worst  construction  on  all  her  actions,  calumniated 
her  best  intentions,  distorted  the  significance  of  all  she 
said  and  did,  and  thus  created  the  legend  which  Taci- 
tus afterwards  accepted  blindly.  But  how  easy  it  is, 
even  after  all  these  centuries,  for  an  impartial  historian 
to  discover  the  contradictions  and  the  falsehoods  of 
the  traditional  story!  Agrippina,  as  we  have  seen, 
had  had  a  son  by  her  first  husband  Domitius  Aheno- 
barbus.  She  had  brought  him  up  very  strictly,  and 
had  given  him  the  most   distinguished   preceptors, 


Last    Years  and  Death  of  Claudius    iSi 

from  whom  was  vSeneca.  In  the  year  50  she  pro- 
cured his  adoption  by  Claudius  and  caused  him  to 
assume  the  name  of  Nero  which  had  acquired  such 
glory  on  the  banks  of  the  Metaurus  on  the  day  which 
was  perhaps  decisive  of  the  great  conflict  between 
Rome  and  Hannibal.  In  securing  the  admission  of 
her  son  into  the  family  of  Augustus,  she  sought  to 
secure  both  the  interests  of  that  family  and  those  of 
the  State.  Had  not  recent  events  shown  how  difficult 
it  was  to  find  an  emperor  outside  the  Augustan  line? 
If  Claudius,  in  spite  of  his  many  weaknesses,  together 
with  Agrippina,  who  was  but  a  woman,  had  managed 
to  keep  the  State  going  was  it  not  partly  due  to  the 
prestige  of  their  name?  But  if  the  family  were  to 
retain  the  supreme  power  it  was  necessary  that  it 
should  possess  a  certain  number  of  male  members 
from  whom  an  emperor  might  be  chosen.  Claudius 
was  an  old  man,  and  the  only  other  man  in  the  family 
was  Britannicus,  his  son  by  Messalina,  then  a  boy  of 
nine.  In  50  the  son  of  Agrippina  was  thirteen — also 
a  mere  child  though  somewhat  older — and  if  Clau- 
dius were  to  die  at  that  moment  there  would  be  no 
possible  successor  in  the  family.  It  was  indeed  to  be 
hoped  that  Claudius  might  yet  live  many  years,  but 
it  was  only  prudent  to  prepare  the  son  of  Domitius 
Ahenobarbus  for  the  succession  by  giving  him  an 
illustrious  and  venerated  name.  Had  not  Augustus 
simultaneously  prepared  first  Drusus  and  Tiberius, 
and  then  Germanicus  and  Drusus  son  of  Tiberius? 
Precisely  because  the  office  was  not  yet  in  any  way 
hereditary  it  was  desirable  to  leave  the  senate  a  certain 
liberty  of  choice  and  to  make  provision  for  all  even- 
tualities. And  what  if  Britannicus  should  die  young 
like  Drusus  and  Germanicus? 


1 82  Caligula  and  Claudius 

The  enemies  of  Agrippina,  however,  did  not  construe 
her  action  in  this  way.  According  to  them  she  in- 
troduced her  son  into  the  imperial  family  out  of 
hatred  for  Britannicus,  in  order  to  deprive  him  of  his 
position  and  prevent  him  from  succeeding  his  father. 
Agrippina  was  so  far  from  wishing  to  persecute  the 
descendants  of  Messalina  that  she  betrothed  her  son 
to  Octavia,  Messalina's  daughter  by  Claudius,  an 
excellent  young  lady,  strictly  brought  up  according  to 
ancient  principles.  In  spite  of  this,  it  was  said  that 
Agrippina  was  keeping  Britannicus  in  the  background, 
was  preventing  him  from  seeing  his  father,  was  inter- 
fering with  his  education,  and  was  doing  all  she  could 
to  injure  him.  It  appears  also  that  attempts  were 
made  to  influence  the  boy  and  to  poison  his  mind 
against  Nero  and  Agrippina,  and  in  fact  to  recommence 
the  old  game  of  sowing  discord  among  the  members  of 
the  imperial  family.  No  attempt,  however,  was  made 
to  make  a  quarrel  between  Claudius  and  Agrippina. 
An  empress  was  practically  invulnerable.  Messalina 
had  been  able  to  hatch  a  plot  on  a  vast  scale  and  to 
carry  it  to  the  very  point  of  execution  before  any  one 
dared  to  accuse  her  to  the  emperor;  it  was  therefore 
useless  to  attempt  any  direct  machinations  against 
Agrippina  who  enjoyed  a  certain  popularity.  All  the 
same,  sinister  rumours  were  cautiously  circulated  in 
whispers  in  order  to  discredit  her.  She  was  the  mis- 
tress, some  said  of  Pallas,  some  said  of  Seneca.  She 
was  insatiably  avaricious,  proud,  domineering,  and 
vindictive.  She  tyrannized  over  Claudius  and  had 
carefully  isolated  him.  Woe  to  any  young  and  good- 
looking  woman  who  tried  to  go  near  the  emperor ! 

Meanwhile  Claudius's  government,  feeble,  under- 
mined, and  discredited,  followed  its  curious  destiny 


Last    Years  and  Death  of  Claudms     183 

and,  largely  owing  to  the  vigorous  support  of  Agrip- 
pina,  went  on  in  spite  of  all.  But,  suddenly,  in  the 
night  of  October  12-13,  54,  Claudius  fell  a  victim  to  a 
sudden  illness  and  died.  This  abrupt  end  of  his  curious 
reign  was  an  event  of  such  grave  consequence  that  it 
is  necessary  to  examine  closely  the  rumours,  the 
stories,  and  the  fictions  to  which  it  gave  rise. 


CHAPTER    VII 

NERO 

48.  The  Story  of  the  Poisoning  of  Claudius  and  the 
Election  of  Nero  (Oct.  13,  54,  A.D.)-  Tacitus  relates 
that  Agrippina,  disquieted  by  the  preference  which 
Claudius  had  for  some  time  been  showing  for  Britanni- 
cus,  poisoned  her  husband  by  drugging  a  dish  of  mush- 
rooms. Claudius,  however,  though  he  felt  ill,  did  not 
die  and,  on  this,  the  empress  summoned  Claudius's 
physician  Xenophon  who  was  devoted  to  her,  and  he, 
on  the  pretext  of  curing  the  emperor,  spread  a  deadly 
poison  on  his  throat.' 

This  tale  is  so  strange  that  Tacitus  himself  when  he 
comes  to  the  final  and  most  improbable  incident, 
that  of  the  doctor,  finds  it  necessary  to  shield  his 
responsibility  behind  a  "creditur."  But  if,  on  Taci- 
tus's   own   admission,    the   episode   of   Xenophon   is 

^  Tac,  Ann.,  xii.,  66-67.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  Suetonius 
(Claud.,  44)  says  that  there  were  many  different  accounts  of  the 
way  in  which  Claudius  had  been  poisoned.  He  gives  several 
versions  entirely  different  from  that  followed  so  confidently  by 
Tacitus.  It  is  also  noteworthy  that  Flavius  Josephus  {Ant.  Jud., 
XX.,  8,  i),  a  contemporary  writer,  explicitly  declares  that  the 
account  of  the  poisoning  was  a  story  told  by  some  people.  These 
two  facts  confirm  the  supposition  that  this  is  pother  of  the  many 
cases  of  defamatory  tales  invented  against  the  Julio-Claudian 
family. 

184 


Poisoning  of  Clatidius — Election  of  Nero    185 

doubtful,  what  is  left  of  the  whole  story?  Moreover 
Tacitus  himself,  in  the  chapter  containing  this  ro- 
mantic account,  states  that  Claudius  had  been  ailing 
for  some  time,  so  much  so  that  he  had  gone  to  Sinuessa 
for  a  cure.  Is  it  not  then  simpler  to  suppose  that  the 
old  emperor,  being  already  ill,  succtmibed  unexpectedly 
to  his  malady?  The  motive  assigned  by  Tacitus 
for  the  commission  of  the  crime  is  absurd.  It  is  more 
than  probable  that  Claudius,  in  his  heart  at  least, 
preferred  Britannicus  to  Nero.  Britannicus  was  his 
own  son,  Nero  only  his  step-son.  But,  even  admitting 
that  Agrippina  desired  her  son  to  succeed  Claudius, 
what  danger  could  she  see  in  this  affection?  The 
imperial  authority  was  not  hereditary,  and  the  choice 
of  each  new  emperor,  which  it  fell  to  the  senate  to 
make,  depended  on  many  quite  uncertain  conditions 
among  which  the  most  important  was  the  support  of 
the  army.  If  Agrippina  indeed  desired  that  Nero 
might  be  the  successor  of  Claudius  she  must  have 
ardently  desired  that  Claudius  might  live  some  years 
longer.  Nero  was  not  yet  seventeen  and  was  there- 
fore below  the  age  at  which  his  mother  might  hope 
to  make  him  emperor. 

Nor  is  the  account  more  probable  which  Tacitus 
gives  of  Agrippina's  intrigues,  during  the  night  on 
which  Claudius  died,  to  prevent  Britannicus  from 
being  chosen  emperor  and  to  bring  about  the  elec- 
tion of  Nero.  If  we  remember  that  Britannicus  was 
then  only  thirteen  years  of  age  we  shall  see  how  absurd 
the  charges  made  by  Tacitus  are.  Britannicus  was 
excluded  by  the  mere  fact  of  his  age.  A  boy  of 
thirteen  could  not  be  put  at  the  head  of  the  legions 
and  of  the  empire.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we  keep  in 
mind  the  respective  ages  of  Britannicus  and  Nero, 


1 86  Nero 

and  admit  that  Claudius  died  a  natural  death,  it  is 
not  difficult  to  reconstruct  the  situation  at  this  critical 
moment.  Britannicus  and  Nero  were  the  only  two 
male  members  of  the  family  of  Augustus.  On  the 
death  of  Claudius,  when  the  elder  of  the  two  was  only 
seventeen,  had  it  not  become  necessary  to  seek  for 
Claudius's  successor  in  another  family  as  had  already 
been  attempted  after  the  death  of  Caligula?  Was  it 
possible  to  make  the  senate  elect  and  to  impose  on  the 
legions  a  stripling  like  Nero  who  was  inexperienced 
and  timid,  and  still,  as  it  were,  at  school?  On  the  other 
hand  to  seek  for  a  successor  in  another  family  was 
obviously  not  an  expedient  which  could  be  very  pleas- 
ing either  to  Agrippina.or  to  the  freedmen  who  had 
become  so  rich  and  powerful  owing  to  the  favour 
shown  them  by  Claudius.  To  attempt  such  a  change 
might,  moreover,  be  dangerous.  And  yet  if  it  was  to 
be  avoided  there  was  only  one  thing  to  be  done  and 
that  was  to  confront  the  senate  with  the  candidatiire 
of  Nero  and  to  ask  them  to  place  at  the  head  of  the 
greatest  empire  and  the  greatest  army  that  had  yet 
been  seen  a  mere  boy ! 

Agrippina  and  her  friends  must  have  been  in  great 
perplexity  during  the  hours  which  preceded  and 
followed  the  death  of  Claudius.  The  two  alternatives 
were  equally  dangerous.  It  was  finally  decided  to 
stake  all  on  the  candidature  of  Nero.  The  move  was 
a  bold  one  because  strong,  and  perhaps  insuperable, 
opposition  was  to  be  expected  in  the  senate,  if  the 
senate  were  allowed  to  discuss  the  question  freely. 
It  was  therefore  clear  that  recourse  must  be  had  to  the 
same  weapon  as  had  conquered  the  senate's  hesitation 
on  the  occasion  of  the  election  of  Claudius.  That 
weapon    was    the    army.     Accordingly    during    the 


Agrippina  and  Restoration  of  the  Republic  187 

night  the  jDrcetorian  cohorts  were  warned  and  prepared 
by  Seneca  and  Af  rani  us  Burrus,  the  commander  of 
the  guard.  The  great  name  of  Nero — then  still  the 
most  glorious  in  Roman  history — and  the  memory  of 
Drusus  and  Germanicus  had  their  wonted  effect  on 
the  soldiers.  On  the  morning  of  the  13th  the  gates  of 
the  imperial  palace  were  thrown  open,  and  Nero, 
accompanied  by  Burrus,  presented  himself  to  the 
cohorts  of  the  guard.  Acclaimed  by  them  he  was 
placed  in  a  litter  and  conducted  to  the  camp  of  the 
praetorians  who  in  their  turn  acclaimed  him  as  their 
chief.  Shortly  afterwards  the  senate  was  convoked 
and  received  the  official  intimation  of  the  death 
of  Claudius,  after  his  successor  had  already  been 
indicated  by  the  troops.  What  was  to  be  done? 
With  a  bad  grace  and  with  many  muttered  remon- 
strances the  senate  ratified  the  choice.  And  the 
senators  returned  to  their  homes  shaking  their  heads 
over  an  empire  which  had  been  entrusted  to  a  boy. 
Never  had  there  been  such  a  degrading  scandal, 
never  such  a  dangerous  situation.  To  what  depths 
had  the  great  State  of  Scipio,  -^milius  Paulus,  and 
Sulla  now  descended?  What  would  be  the  end  of 
it  all? 

49.  Agrippina  and  the  Restoration  of  the  Republic. 
Immediately  after  the  funeral  of  Claudius,  however, 
the  impression  of  the  senators  was  dissipated  by  a 
joyful  surprise.  Nero  appeared  in  the  senate  and,  in 
the  course  of  a  modest  and  polished  oration,  asked 
their  indulgence  for  his  youth  and  inexperience  and 
invited  their  counsel  and  assistance  in  the  performance 
of  his  heavy  task.  He  declared  that  he  would  restore 
to  them  all  the  civil,  judicial,  and  administrative 
powers  exercised   by  his  predecessors,  retaining  for 


1 88  Nero 

himself  only  the  command  of  the  legions. '  In  other 
words  he  was  to  carry  out  that  almost  complete 
restoration  of  the  republic  for  which  the  malcontents 
in  the  senate  had  been  crying  out  for  so  many  years, 
and  the  senate  was  once  more  to  have,  in  all  but  the 
military  sphere,  all  the  powers  it  had  possessed  in  the 
greatest  days  of  the  republic. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  unexpected  re- 
storation of  the  republic  was  a  skilful  move  of  Agrip- 
pina  and  her  friends  to  mitigate  the  natural  discontent 
which  the  election  of  such  a  mere  boy  inevitably  caused 
in  the  senate,  and  to  make  them  forget  the  violence 
offered  by  the  praetorians  to  the  great  assembly.  On 
the  other  hand  the  government  of  a  boy  of  seventeen 
must  necessarily  be  weak,  especially  during  the  early 
years  in  which  the  emperor  would  be  serving  his  ap- 
prenticeship. The  support  and  goodwill  of  a  body 
which,  in  spite  of  its  decadence,  had  still  much  influ- 
ence would  be  of  immense  assistance  to  him  in  that 
phase  of  his  reign.  It  was  an  extremely  adroit 
manoeuvre  and  it  was  successful.  The  senate  was 
conquered  by  the  concessions  offered  to  them ;  they 
ceased  to  grumble,  and  the  first  two  years  of  the  new 
reign  were  entirely  successful.  Nero  kept  his  word 
and  allowed  the  senate  to  exercise  its  fimctions  with- 
out interference  while  he,  obediently  following  the 
counsels  of  Seneca,  of  Burrus,  and  of  his  mother, 
occupied  himself  entirely  with  the  army.  It  seemed 
to  everybody  that  Nero  was  showing  an  example  of 
modesty  and  self-restraint  remarkable  in  itself  and 
still  more  so  in  so  young  a  man. 

'  Tac,  Ann.,  xiii.,  4:  teneret  anliqua  munia  senatus:  consulum 
tnbunalibus  Italia  et  publicce  provincice  adsisterent:  illi  patrum 
aditum  prceberent:  se  mandatis  exercitibus  consultnnim. 


Agrippina  and  Restoration  of  the  Republic  189 

But  this  was  an  illusion.  Nero's  contemporaries 
mistook  for  modesty  and  self-restraint  what  in  fact 
was  idleness  and  indifference.  In  all  aristocracies  in 
which  deference  to  family  tradition  is  considered 
to  be  the  most  sacred  duty  rebellious  spirits  every 
now  and  then  arise  who  feel  compelled  to  do  all  that 
tradition  forbids  and  not  to  do  all  that  it  requires. 
Nero  was  one  of  these  rebels  of  high  descent,  and  his 
personality  and  his  fate  will  remain  a  mystery  to  us 
if  we  do  not  firmly  grasp  this  point.  He  was  glad  to 
leave  to  the  senate  the  control  of  many  departments 
of  State,  not  because  of  his  respect  for  the  constitution 
but  because  he  found  war,  law,  public  affairs — all 
the  pursuits,  in  fact,  which  tradition  indicated  as 
most  worthy  of  a  Roman  nobleman,  tedious  and  dis- 
tasteful. His  predilection  was  for  the  fine  arts,  more 
especially  poetry,  music,  singing,  and  dancing.  He 
indulged  this  predilection  much  more  than  was 
thought  fitting  in  a  noble  Roman,  taking  much  more 
trouble  to  cultivate  these  accomplishments,  and  in 
particular  to  perfect  himself  in  singing  and  playing, 
than  he  did  in  learning  to  play  his  part  as  the  head  of 
the  army  and  the  empire.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  this 
was  bound  to  lead  very  soon  to  a  breach  between 
Nero  and  his  mother.  Agrippina  was  a  devotee  of 
tradition  and  would  have  had  her  son  devote  himself 
to  military  affairs,  to  the  administration  of  the  law 
and  the  concerns  of  diplomacy,  and  not  to  musical 
studies.  Thus,  though  Nero  was  universally  popular 
at  Rome  both  with  the  senate  and  with  the  people, 
Agrippina  was  far  from  satisfied.  Riches,  power,  and 
adulation  soon  developed  the  young  man's  natural 
but  hitherto  latent  inclinations,  and  Agrippina  soon 
saw  her  son  to  whom  she  had  so  faithfully  imparted 


1 90  Nero 

a  severe  and  thoroughly  Roman  education,  growing 
into  an  effeminate  fop  full  of  exotic  caprices,  who 
lived  only  for  pleasure.  She  did  her  best  to  correct 
these  tendencies;  but  an  emperor  cannot  be  ruled  like 
a  son,  her  efforts  soon  led  to  differences  of  opinion 
and,  owing  to  an  incident  which  occurred  about  a 
year  after  Nero's  election,  finally  ended  in  an  open 
rupture. 

50.  The  Beginning  of  Family  Quarrels — The 
Death  of  Britannicus  (55  A.D.).  Nero,  as  we  said,  had 
married  Octavia,  a  perfect  type  of  the  Roman  matron. 
But  he  soon  showed  his  foreign  tastes  by  taking  a 
fancy  to  a  beautiful  freedwoman  named  Acte.  So 
violent  was  his  passion  that  for  a  moment  he  thought 
of  repudiating  Octavia  and  putting  Acte  in  her  place. 
This  was  madness,  for  the  lex  de  maritandis  ordinibus 
made  marriage  between  a  senator  and  a  freedwoman 
impossible.  Agrippina  opposed  the  repudiation  of 
Octavia  and  succeeded  in  preventing  it;  but,  in  spite 
of  her  protests,  Nero  retorted  by  ignoring  Octavia 
and  openly  living  with  Acte  as  his  wife.  Once  more, 
this  time  owing  to  an  amorous  caprice,  discord  had 
entered  the  house  of  the  Caesars.  As  had  always 
been  the  case  since  the  days  of  Augustus,  people 
were  not  wanting  who  were  ready  to  turn  the  quar- 
rels of  the  imperial  family  to  account  by  envenoming 
the  dispute.  Agrippina,  as  we  have  seen,  had  many 
enemies.  Nero  was  soon  surrounded  by  a  clique 
who,  by  flattering  his  vanity  and  pandering  to  his  evil 
passions,  hoped  to  set  him  against  his  mother  and 
through  him  to  overthrow  her  power  in  the  State 
which  they  so  much  detested. 

Meanwhile  the  senate,  to  which  Nero  had  restored 
practically  all  its  powers,  had  begun  to  govern  the 


Family  Quarrels — Death  of  Britannic  us     191 

empire  once  more,  but  in  a  manner  which  was  feeble 
and  incoherent  indeed.  The  senate  had  become  a 
senile  assembly  wanting  in  powerful  leaders,  lacking 
both  activity  and  energy.  The  authority  of  an  en- 
ergetic and  sagacious  prince  was  now  necessary  to  a 
State  which  without  it  always  erred  either  by  excess 
or  defect.  But  the  boy  on  whom  chance  had  devolved 
this  office  thought  of  nothing  but  his  own  amusements 
and  his  musical  successes.  There  remained  Agrip- 
pina  who  was  a  resolute  woman  and  had  the  support 
of  a  small  but  powerful  party  composed,  as  Tacitus 
tells  us,  of  the  oldest  families  of  the  aristocracy. 
Since  Nero  neglected  his  duties  and  separated  himself 
from  her  party,  Agrippina  drew  nearer  to  Britannicus, 
the  other  male  member  of  the  family  on  whom  the 
hopes  of  the  most  ancient  and  conservative  nobility 
were  also  set.  It  was,  however,  in  vain,  for  towards 
the  end  of  the  year  55,  Britannicus  was  suddenly 
seized  with  illness  during  a  banquet  and  died  shortly 
afterwards.  It  was  at  once  said  that  he  had  been 
poisoned  by  Nero  and  this  charge  has  since  been 
repeated  by  the  historians. 

This  is  more  probable  than  many  other  similar 
accusations  which  we  find  in  Roman  history,  for 
there  was  at  least  an  obvious  motive  which  may  have 
induced  Nero  to  get  rid  of  Britannicus.  We  can 
hardly  venture  to  say,  however,  that  the  case  is  proved, 
for  several  details  in  the  story  suggest  doubts.  Be 
this  as  it  may,  the  rumour  spread  rapidly  and  was 
believed,  by  Agrippina  among  others,  and,  whether 
true  or  false,  it  had  the  effect  of  still  further  exasper- 
ating the  empress  mother.  Though  the  death  of 
Britannicus  had  deprived  her  of  her  most  potent 
weapon,  Agrippina  did  not  give  up  the  struggle.     She 


192  Nero 

drew  closer  the  bonds  which  united  her  to  the  great 
families.  She  used  all  her  efforts  to  stir  up  amon.u; 
them  an  opposition  which  would  control  Nero,  and  her 
agitation  was  pushed  forward  with  all  her  usual  energy. 
Nero  took  alarm,  deprived  his  mother  of  the  body- 
guard which  had  been  assigned  to  her  in  the  time  of 
Claudius,  compelled  her  to  leave  the  palace  and  take 
up  her  abode  in  the  house  that  had  belonged  to  her 
grandmother,  the  mother  of  Germanicus  and,  in  fact, 
did  what  he  could  to  isolate  her.  She  resisted  these 
measures  and  the  conflict  between  mother  and  son 
was  embittered. 

51.  Nero's  Oriental  Policy.  Though  the  senate 
was  inactive  and  Nero  neglected  public  affairs  there 
was  a  group  of  men  about  the  emperor,  headed  by 
Seneca  and  Burrus,  who,  particularly  in  military  mat- 
ters, were  able  to  give  to  the  policy  of  the  govern- 
ment the  impetus  which  should  have  come  from  Nero 
himself.  This  is  shown  by  a  great  scheme  of  political 
activity  in  the  East  which  was  begun  early  in  55. 
The  preceding  emperors  had  occupied  themselves 
much  with  Gaul,  Germany,  and  Britain,  that  is  to  say 
with  the  western  provinces,  and  but  little  with  the 
East  where  the  Parthians  had  again  put  themselves 
foTward  to  the  detriment  of  Roman  power  and  pres- 
tige. At  the  accession  of  Nero  Armenia  was  under 
the  government  of  Tiridates,  the  brother  of  Vologeses, 
king  of  Parthia.  The  country  was  therefore  entirely 
swept  clear  of  Roman  influence,  and  this  caused 
discontent  among  the  Roman  public.  Nero's  govern- 
ment, that  is  the  counsellors  by  whose  opinion  he  was 
guided,  therefore  decided  that  Eastern  affairs,  too 
much  neglected  by  Claudius,  must  immediately  be 
taken  in  hand  and  dealt  with  more  firmly.     As  Ummi- 


Poppcea  Sahina  193 

dius  Quadratus,  the  governor  of  Syria,  had  sliown 
himself  incapable,  L.  Domitius  Corbulo,  who  had 
distinguished  himself  some  years  before  in  Germany, 
was  sent  to  the  East  with  considerable  forces.  The 
vassal  sovereigns  were  directed  to  prepare  auxiliary 
contingents,  and  at  the  same  time  negotiations  were 
opened  with  the  King  of  Parthia  to  induce  him  to 
evacuate  Armenia.  Vologeses  was  probably  caught 
unprepared  by  this  threat,  and  in  55  he  made  a  show  of 
yielding.  He  asked  for  peace  and  gave  hostages  to 
Rome,  but  Tiridates  did  not  leave  Armenia.  On  the 
other  hand,  though  the  troops  at  Corbulo's  disposal 
in  Syria  were  enough  for  a  military  demonstration 
they  were  insufficient  for  a  serious  war  against  the 
Parthian  empire.  For  this  it  was  absolutely  necessary 
to  restore  discipline  among  the  soldiers,  whose  moral 
had  been  relaxed  by  life  in  the  East  and  by  the  long 
continuance  of  peace.  It  was  also  necessary  to  re-arm 
them  and  to  transfer  to  the  scene  of  action  some  of 
the  seasoned  legions  of  the  Western  provinces.  Fore- 
seeing that  the  agreement  of  55  would  be  a  mere 
truce  preparatory  to  a  decisive  conflict,  and,  wishing 
to  reach  a  stable  settlement  in  the  East,  those  who 
governed  in  Nero's  name  while  he  lived  in  discord 
with  his  mother  gave  Corbulo  the  means  of  carrying 
out  a  reorganization  of  the  Eastern  armies. 

52.  Poppaea  Sabina  and  the  Assassination  of 
Agrippina  (March,  59  A.D.).  Thus  between  56  and 
58  while  the  discord  between  Nero  and  Agrippina 
was  reaching  a  pitch  of  frenzy,  while  the  party  of  the 
younger  nobility  and  the  party  of  tradition  whose 
struggles  had  disturbed  the  State  ever  since  the  days 
of  Augustus  were  regrouping  themselves  respectively 
about  the  emperor  and  his  mother,  an  army  was  being 

VOL.    II — 13 


1 94  Nero 

prepared  in  the  East  which  was  to  be  much  stronger 
than  any  which  Rome  had  maintained  in  that  region 
for  some  time.  After  58,  however,  the  struggle  between 
the  mother  and  the  son  took  a  disastrous  and  indeed  a 
fatal  turn.  It  was  then  that  Nero,  who  had  forgotten 
Acte,  became  enamoured  of  Poppsa  Sabina,  the  wo- 
man who  was  destined  to  ruin  his  life  and  the  whole 
fortune  of  the  Julio-Claudian  house.  Poppasa  be- 
longed to  a  wealthy  and  prominent  Roman  family; 
she  was  very  beautiful,  highly  cultivated,  and  attrac- 
tive, and,  like  her  husband  Otho,  she  belonged  to 
that  section  of  the  nobility  which  admired  and  imi- 
tated the  manners  and  customs  of  the  Orient.  Her 
husband  was  the  most  distinguished  of  all  the  young 
aristocrats  of  Rome  for  his  elegance  and  luxury.  It  is 
easy  to  see  what  followed  when  Nero  fell  in  love  with 
Poppaea  and  in  order  to  have  greater  freedom,  des- 
patched Otho  on  an  honorary  mission  to  Lusitania. 
Poppaea  remained  in  Rome  with  the  emperor,  and, 
perceiving  that  her  power  over  him  was  continually 
growing,  conceived  an  audacious  scheme  which  was 
no  less  than  to  secure  a  divorce  from  Otho  and  to 
become  the  wife  of  Nero. '  The  emperor  was  visibly 
changing  his  habits,  manners,  and  ideas.  In  place 
of  his  former  indifference  to  politics  he  now  displayed 
a  sudden  desire  to  leave  his  mark  on  public  affairs. 
One  day,  for  instance,  he  appeared  without  warning 
in   the   senate   and   proposed   nothing  less   than  the 

'  Tacitus  tells  the  story  of  Nero,  Poppaea,  and  OthO  in  two 
different  ways  in  Ann.,  xiii.,  45,  and  Hist.,  i.,  13.  We  have 
followed  the  version  given  in  the  Annals  because  it  is  much 
simpler,  clearer,  and  more  probable  than  the  romantic  narrative 
given  in  the  Histories,  although  Suetonius  {Otho)  and  Plutarch 
{Galba,  19)  approximate  to  the  latter. 


Poppcea  Sabina  195 

abolition  throughout  the  empire  of  all  the  veciigalia, 
that  is  of  all  the  indirect  taxes.  These  imposts  were  a 
great  burden  to  the  lower  orders  and  the  small  traders, 
and  it  is  therefore  impossible  to  imagine  a  more  popular 
proposal.  But  the  senate  was  much  disconcerted, 
because  if  such  a  measure  were  passed  the  finances 
of  the  empire  would  be  bankrupt.  There  was  a  long 
discussion,  and,  in  the  end,  Nero  was  persuaded  to 
desist,  but  he  insisted  on  doing  at  least  something 
for  the  people  by  an  edict  abolishing  many  of  the 
abuses  which  aggravated  the  burden  of  these  taxes 
and  by  exempting  soldiers  from  paying  them.  ^ 

It  is  possible  that  Poppaea  had  something  to  do 
with  this  sudden  concern  of  the  prince  for  his  people. 
Nero  was  more  and  more  inclined  to  marry  her,  but  in 
order  to  do  so  it  was  necessary  to  repudiate  Octavia. 
Now  public  opinion  would  never  have  tolerated  with- 
out scandal  and  protest  the  divorce  of  Octavia  who 
was  a  model  of  Roman  virtue,  in  order  that  the  em- 
peror might  marry  a  frivolous  and  immoral  woman 
like  Poppaea.  In  view  of  the  hold  which  the  principles 
of  the  traditional  Roman  puritanism  still  possessed 
over  public  opinion,  if  not  over  the  private  lives  of 
individual  citizens,  it  would  be  a  bold  and  dangerous 
step  to  attempt  such  a  divorce.  Nero  therefore  had  to 
prepare  one  way  to  the  attainment  of  his  wish  by 
acquiring  popularity  with  the  soldiers  and  the  mass 
of  the  people.  Soon,  however,  it  became  clear  to 
Nero  and  Poppsea  that  there  was  another  obstacle 
in  the  shape  of  Agrippina.  Agrippina  had  made  the 
marriage  between  Nero  and  Octavia,  and  she  had 
declared  that,  so  long  as  she  was  alive,  Octavia  should 
not  be  repudiated. 
*  Cf.  Tac,  Ann.,  xiii.,  50. 


196  Nero 

In  spite  of  the  isolation  in  which  her  son  had  con- 
demned her  to  live,  the  empress  mother  had  still 
sufficient  energy  and  prestige  to  give  the  emperor 
pause  in  a  matter  in  which  she  was  certain  to  have 
the  support  of  public  opinion.  Nero,  moreover,  was 
timid,  weak,  and  vacillating  in  his  methods,  and  it  is 
not  surprising  that  he  became  alarmed  by  his  mother's 
opposition.  What  followed?  We  have  now  reached 
the  most  terrible  moment  in  the  hfe  of  Nero,  at  which 
he  took  the  decisive  and  irrevocable  step  on  the  path 
which  was  to  lead  him  to  ruin  and  infamy.  Was  it 
the  effect  of  Poppasa's  seductions  that  nerved  Nero  to 
matricide?  Was  she  assisted  in  her  aims  by  the 
many  enemies  of  Agrippina  in  Rome  and  in  the  palace  ? 
Did  Nero  finally  convince  himself  that  unless  his 
mother  were  removed  he  could  never  freely  enjoy 
the  empire  which  he  regarded  more  and  more  as  an 
instrument  of  pleasure  and  of  luxury?  We  cannot 
answer  these  questions  with  certainty,  but  there  is  no 
doubt  that  in  the  year  59  Nero  made  up  his  mind  to 
have  her  assassinated  in  accordance  with  a  plan  pre- 
pared by  the  freedman  Anicetus,  the  commander  of 
the  fleet,  by  which  it  was  hoped  that  secrecy  would  be 
assiu'ed.  Nero  was  not  so  foolish  that  he  did  not 
know  that  at  Rome  even  an  emperor  could  not  with 
impunity  stain  his  hands  with  his  mother's  blood. 
Anicetus,  therefore,  had  contrived  a  vessel  with  a 
secret  trap-door,  and,  if  Nero  could  persuade  Agrippina 
to  embark,  it  would  be  easy  to  arrange  for  her  to  be 
sent  to  the  bottom,  thus  burying  the  secret  of  her 
death  in  the  sea. 

The  accoimt  by  Tacitus  of  this  infamous  murder 
is  too  well  known  to  require  detailed  repetition.  In 
the  spring  of  59  Nero,  who  was  at  Baiee,  pretended 


Assassination  of  Agrippina  197 

to  desire  a  reconciliation  with  his  mother,  and  invited 
her  to  come  from  Antium,  where  she  then  was,  to 
visit  him  at  his  villa.  He  received  her  with  respect 
and  tenderness  and  when  Agrippina,  glad  and  re- 
assured, prepared  to  return  in  the  ship  prepared 
for  her  by  Anicetus,  Nero  accompanied  her  on  board 
and  affectionately  embraced  her.  The  ship  set  sail 
on  a  fine  spring  evening;  the  sea  was  calm  and  threat- 
ened no  danger.  Agrippina,  reclining  on  a  couch,  en- 
joyed the  beauty  of  the  night.  But  when  the  sailors 
opened  the  trap-door  the  ship,  whether  owing  to  a 
defect  in  the  machinery  or  to  want  of  skill  or  courage 
on  the  part  of  the  murderers,  did  not  sink  as  rapidly 
as  had  been  expected,  but  merely  heeled  over.  Agrip- 
pina had  time  to  throw  herself  into  the  sea,  while  in 
the  confusion  the  assassins  were  killing  one  of  her 
attendants  whom  they  mistook  for  herself.  At 
dawn,  shortly  after  the  murderers  had  brought  to 
Nero  the  news  that  Agrippina  was  at  the  bottom  of 
the  sea,  there  arrived  at  the  emperor's  villa  one  of  her 
freedmen  who  announced  that  the  ship  had  been 
wrecked  owing  to  an  accident,  but  that  the  empress 
herself  had  been  able  to  swim  ashore  safely,  was  now 
at  one  of  her  own  villas  in  the  neighbourhood,  and 
had  sent  to  reassure  her  son  as  to  her  safety.  She 
had  certainly  understood  the  true  reason  of  this 
extraordinary  shipwreck  in  a  calm  sea,  but  she  pre- 
tended that  she  had  not  understood,  for  this  was  her 
last  and  only  chance  of  escape.  What  could  she  do 
against  an  emperor  who  did  not  recoil  from  matricide? 
Nero,  however,  was  dismayed.  He  feared  that 
Agrippina  would  hasten  to  denounce  his  crime  to  the 
senate  and  people,  and  would  raise  the  legions  against 
him.     What  would  happen  if  the  soldiers  knew  that 


198  Nero 

he  had  planned  the  assassination  of  the  daughter 
of  Germanicus?  Mad  with  terror,  Nero  ordered 
Seneca  and  Burrus  to  be  summoned.  They  had 
certainly  known  nothing  of  his  infamous  project, 
but  he  now  told  them  the  whole  truth  and  asked  for 
their  advice  and  assistance.  If  Tacitus  has  not  over- 
coloured  the  picture,  the  scene  which  followed  was 
highly  dramatic.  It  appears  that  at  first  the  two 
counsellors  did  not  know  what  to  advise.  Then 
Seneca  is  said  to  have  asked  Burrus  what  would  be 
the  consequence  if  the  praetorians  were  ordered  to 
complete  the  work  which  had  been  commenced. 
That  is  to  say  he  hinted,  in  the  form  of  a  question, 
the  advice  that  Agrippina  should  be  killed.  Burrus, 
however,  who  did  not  wish  to  take  such  a  responsi- 
bility upon  himself,  is  said  to  have  replied  at  once  that 
the  praetorians  would  never  kill  the  daughter  of 
Germanicus,  and  to  have  added  that,  if  it  had  indeed 
come  to  that,  i.\nicetus  and  his  sailors,  who  had  begun 
the  work,  might  perhaps  be  able  to  carry  it  to  a  con- 
clusion. He  also  therefore,  gave  the  same  advice  as 
Seneca,  but  he  too  only  hinted  it,  and  left  the  re- 
sponsibility with  Nero.  Nero  sent  for  Anicetus  and 
begged  him  to  save  him  and  give  him  the  empire  a 
second  time.  And  Anicetus,  who,  if  Agrippina  were 
spared,  ran  the  risk  of  bearing  all  the  blame  for  the 
sanguinary  imbroglio  which  had  arisen,  had  no  hesita- 
tion in  sending  a  party  of  sailors  to  murder  Agrippina 
at  the  villa  where  she  had  taken  refuge. 

53.  The  War  with  Armenia  and  Parthia  (58-60 
A.D.).  The  irrevocable  deed  had  been  done.  But 
the  death  of  Agrippina  was  an  event  of  such  conse- 
quence and  had  happened  in  such  circumstances,  that 
it  could  not  be  concealed.     It  was  necessary  to  give 


TJi£  War  with  Armenia  and  Parthia    199 

an  account  of  it  that  would  disarm  suspicion.  Nero 
and  his  advisers  sent  the  senate  a  report  which  stated 
that  Agrippina  had  been  discovered  conspiring 
against  the  emperor  and  had  committed  suicide.  Her 
friends  however  were  faithful  to  her  memory.  In 
the  version  given  by  the  emperor,  the  account  of 
the  conspiracy  and  her  suicide  sounded  awkward 
in  conjunction  with  the  story  of  her  extraordinary 
shipwreck  to  which  it  had  been  necessary  to  allude 
as  everyone  knew  about  it.  The  official  account  was 
not  believed;  strange  rumours  were  soon  in  circula- 
tion, and  through  much  that  was  invented  and  fanci- 
ful, the  public  divined  the  truth.  It  made  a  terrible 
impression.  No  doubt  the  people  of  Rome  and 
Italy  had  become  very  corrupt,  but  they  were  not  so 
degraded  as  not  to  be  horrified  at  matricide,  even  when 
committed  by  an  emperor.  Nero  was  terrified;  he 
postponed  the  divorce  of  Octavia  and  his  marriage 
with  Poppaea  to  a  more  suitable  opportunity,  and  for 
several  months  did  not  dare  to  return  to  Rome.  But 
there  were  no  serious  consequences.  The  horror 
felt  by  the  public  did  not  manifest  itself  in  any  open 
and  irrevocable  act.  The  legions  did  not  move  and 
the  senate  pretended  to  accept  the  official  version  of 
Agrippina's  death.  Though  Agrippina,  who  in  her 
later  years  had  been  thoroughly  detested,  now  be- 
came an  object  of  universal  commiseration,  Rome 
had  no  means  of  expressing  its  sorrow  more  effectively 
than  in  sterile  lamentations. 

The  news  which  about  this  time  came  from  the 
East  helped  Nero  to  overcome  the  dangers  of  the 
first  and  most  perilous  moment  when  the  impression 
produced  on  the  mind  of  the  people  was  fresh.  In 
the  spring  of  58  Corbulo,  as  we  have  seen,  had  com- 


200  Nero 

menced  the  reconquest  of  Armenia.  The  Roman 
general,  by  exciting  internal  troubles  in  Parthia,  had 
prevented  the  king  from  coming  to  the  aid  of  Tiridates. 
Nevertheless  the  conquest  of  Armenia  had  proved 
no  easy  task.  Tiridates  had  known  how  to  combat 
the  large  Roman  armies  by  an  implacable  guerilla 
warfare  which  compelled  his  adversary  to  scatter  his 
forces.  By  the  end  of  58  Corbulo  managed  to  occupy 
and  burn  Artaxata  but  had  not  succeeded  in  destroy- 
ing Tiridates  who  reappeared  in  the  following  spring 
to  obstruct  Corbulo's  further  advance  from  Artaxata 
on  Tigranocerta.  Guerilla  tactics  were  recommenced 
but,  thanks  to  superior  organization  and  generalship 
and  at  the  cost  of  much  hardship,  the  Roman  army 
succeeded  in  occupying  Tigranocerta  in  the  autumn 
of  59,  and  shortly  afterwards  Corbulo  placed  on 
the  throne  of  Armenia  Tigranes,  a  descendant  of 
Herod  the  Great  and  of  King  Archelaus,  who  had  for 
long  lived  at  Rome.  The  outlying  districts  of  the 
country  were  given  to  Pharasmanes  king  of  the 
Iberians,  to  Polemon  king  of  Pontus,  to  Aristobulus 
king  of  Armenia  Minor,  and  to  Antiochus  king  of 
Commagene.  ^ 

54.  The  Insurrection  of  Britain  (60  A.D.)-  The 
news  of  this  successful  campaign  caused  great  joy 
at  Rome,  and  helped  to  mitigate  the  painful  impres- 
sion produced  by  the  tragedy  of  Misenum.     Since  the 

•  On  the  relations  between  Rome  and  Armenia  in  the  time  of 
Nero,  cf.  Furneaux,  The  Roman  Relations  with  Parthia  and 
Armenia  Jrom  the  Time  of  Augustus  to  the  Death  of  Nero,  in  The 
Annals  of  Tacitus,  vol.  ii.,  Oxford,  1896,  pp.  96  ff.;  W.  Henderson, 
The  Chronology  of  the  Wars  in  Armenia,  A.D.  31-63  in  the  Classical 
Review,  vol.  xv.,  (1901);  A.  Abruzzese,  Le  relazione  politiche  tra 
Vimpero  e  V Armenia  da  Claudia  a  Trajano  in  Bessarione,  1912,  pp. 
22  ff. 


Nero  and  Orientalism;  Emperor's  Excesses  201 

days  of  Augustus  there  had  never  been  such  a  glorious 
victory  in  the  East.  The  era  of  Pompey  the  Great 
seemed  to  have  returned;  festivals  and  honours  to 
Nero  were  lavishly  decreed,  as  if  the  Eastern  question 
had  been  settled  for  ever  instead  of  only  for  a  few 
months,  as  turned  out  to  be  the  case.  Nevertheless 
this  elation,  though  very  temporary,  helped  Nero  and 
was  not  disturbed  by  the  less  agreeable  tidings  which 
soon  afterwards  came  from  Britain.  In  the  year 
60,  while  Suetonius  Paulinus,  the  governor  of  that 
province  and  the  best  general  in  the  empire  after  Cor- 
bulo,  was  engaged  in  extending  the  Roman  conquest 
in  the  western  part  of  the  island,  and  endeavouring 
to  seize  the  islet  of  Mona  (Anglesey),  a  venerated 
sanctuary  of  the  Druids,  the  whole  of  the  Romanized 
portion  of  the  country  rose  in  rebellion  in  his  rear. 
The  imposts  and  levies,  the  influx  of  Italian  traders, 
the  economic,  moral,  and  political  disturbances  pro- 
duced by  the  conquest  had  provoked  this  primary 
reaction  in  Britain  as  in  so  many  other  regions.  The 
revolt  was  serious,  but,  fortunately  for  Rome,  Sue- 
tonius Paulinus  by  rapid  and  energetic  action  was 
able  to  subdue  it  in  the  course  of  the  year. 

55.  Nero  and  Orientalism;  the  Emperor's  Growing 
Excesses  (60-62  A.D.).  At  Rome,  meanwhile,  Nero 
now  free  from  the  influence  of  Agrippina,  reassured 
by  the  oblivion  into  which  his  crime  had  been  allowed 
to  fall,  and  encouraged  by  his  successes  in  the  East, 
took  a  bolder  step  in  the  direction  of  his  new  orien- 
tal inclinations.  Personal  predilection  and  political 
motives  combined  to  drive  him  into  this  path.  He 
wished  to  help  the  people  to  forget  Agrippina  by  giving 
Rome  and  Italy  the  easy-going,  splendid,  and  generous 
government  which  corresponded  to  the  aspirations  of 


202  Nero 

the  most  numerous  and  least  opulent  classes  in  the 
State.  In  60,  therefore,  he  founded  at  Rome  the  Ludi 
Neroniani  at  the  expense  of  the  State,  which  to  some 
extent  resembled  the  ancient  Olympic  Games.  Like 
these,  they  were  to  take  place  every  five  years,  and, 
in  addition  to  athletic  contests  and  chariot  races,  there 
were,  it  appears,  also  to  be  competitions  in  music, 
singing,  eloquence,  and  poetry.  In  all  these  contests 
the  emperor  of  course  took  part,  accompanied  by  a 
train  of  those  who  were  now  called  his  augiistani, 
chosen  by  himself  from  among  the  youth  of  the 
Roman  nobility  on  the  same  principle  as  the  courts  of 
the  Hellenistic  successors  of  Alexander  the  Great. 
In  addition,  however,  the  members  of  the  highest 
classes,  the  whole  of  the  jeunesse  doree  of  the  capital, 
were  also  expected  to  participate,  and  did  in  fact 
participate,  while  the  elite  of  the  spectators  on  the 
great  occasions  attended  in  Greek  costume.  The 
collegia  juvenum  which  Augustus  had  founded  in 
Rome  and  Italy  to  be  schools  for  training  in  citizenship 
and  in  the  national  religion  became  under  Nero  the 
organs  of  an  education  half  sporting  and  half  theatri- 
cal, whose  methods  and  curriculum  were  wholly 
Greek.  ^  Nero  squandered  money,  was  profuse  in 
largesses  and  spectacles,  and  commenced  great  public 
works  at  Rome.  He  opened  his  house  to  the  most 
elegant  and  dissipated  young  noblemen,  and  assumed 
the  position  of  their  head  and  master.  Every  day 
there  was  a  feast,  now  in  the  house  of  one,  now  in  the 
gardens  of  another.  And  at  these  gatherings  the  last 
descendants  of  the  families  which  had  conquered  the 

•  On  the  changes  imported  into  public  education  by  Nero  cf. 
Barbagallo,  Lo  stato  e  Vistruzzione  pubblica  nelV  impero  romano, 
Catania,  191 1,  pp.  61  ff. 


Nero  and  Orientalism;  Emperor  s  Excesses  203 

world  vied  with  one  another  in  singing  and  dancing 
and  strove  for  victory  in  chariot  races.  All  this 
was  no  great  novelty  for  the  Romans.  Both  Rome 
and  Italy  had  long  been  familiar  with  what  Nero 
prized  above  all  things.  They  had  seen  the  intermin- 
able retinues  of  servants,  mules  shod  with  gold  and 
silver  and  their  drivers  attired  in  costly  wool,  out- 
riders adorned  with  necklaces  and  bracelets,  golden 
nets  for  fishing,  luxurious  baths,  travelling  carriages 
by  the  thousand,  silken  garments  embroidered  with 
gold,  musicians,  actors,  and  gladiators  extravagantly 
paid,  sumptuous  banquets,  magnificent  litters,  houses 
resplendent  with  gilding  and  marble,  crammed  with 
bronzes  and  pictures,  lakes  bridged,  seas  filled  up,  and 
mountains  levelled  to  give  pleasure  to  the  great  ones 
of  the  earth.  The  last  century  of  the  republic  and 
the  first  seventy  years  of  the  empire  had  seen  all 
these  things.  But  at  Rome  there  had  never  yet  been 
any  official  encouragement  of  such  tastes  and  such 
manners  which  the  Latin  West,  while  it  received  and 
tolerated  them,  had  never  ceased  to  regard  with  diffi- 
dence and  alarm.  The  effects  of  the  imperial  encour- 
agement on  a  society  hesitating  between  two  paths  and 
two  civilizations  was  necessarily  profound.  A  mor- 
bid desire  to  repudiate  the  traditions,  obhgations,  and 
prejudices  of  their  rank  seemed  to  invade  the  youth 
of  the  great  families.  Dancing  became  a  craze,  and 
skill  in  this  art  a  higher  title  to  preferment  than 
ability  to  command  the  legions.  Nero  had  now  cast 
aside  all  restraint.  His  one  ambition  was  to  be  a 
great  singer,  and  all  earthly  glories  seemed  to  him 
insipid  in  comparison  with  success  on  the  stage. 
The  example  that  he  set  in  fact  precipitated  the  moral 
crisis  in   the   Roman   upper   class   which    had   been 


204  Nero 

slowly  maturing  for  two  centuries.  The  dam  of 
ancient  puritan  tradition  seemed  to  be  swept  away  in  a 
moment  by  a  torrent  of  luxury,  pleasure,  and  dissipa- 
tion of  which  the  emperor  set  the  example. 

56.  New  Difficulties  in  the  East:  the  final  Agree- 
ment with  Parthia  on  the  Subject  of  Armenia.  Such 
a  revolution,  however,  could  not  but  produce  a  new 
reaction.  Tradition  was  still  very  strong,  and  the 
mere  will  of  Nero  and  his  young  friends  was  not  enough 
to  destroy  it  all  in  a  few  years.  In  all  classes,  high 
and  low,  there  were  many  who  disapproved  of  these 
innovations,  and  murmured  against  them.  It  was  in 
these  years,  between  60  and  62  that  the  first  libels 
were  published  against  the  emperor  and  his  court 
and  the  first  prosecutions  in  Nero's  reign  (which 
were  still  mild)  for  laesa  mates tas  were  launched. 
The  death  of  Burrus,  which  took  place  in  62,  made  the 
situation  worse.  His  successor  was  a  certain  Tigelli- 
nus,  with  whom  history  has  perhaps  dealt  hardly, 
but  who  was  at  any  rate  a  very  faithful  servant  of 
Nero.  The  significance  of  the  appointment  was 
clear.  The  emperor  had  freed  himself  from  the  last 
of  the  restraints  imposed  on  him  by  his  mother  and 
was  officially  inaugurating  his  own  personal  policy. 
From  this  moment,  indeed,  Seneca's  influence  was 
finally  paralyzed,  and  early  in  this  year  (62)  Nero 
finally  divorced  Octavia  in  order  to  marry  Popp^a. 
A  preference  for  another  woman  was  not  yet,  however, 
a  sufficient  ground  for  divorce  in  the  eyes  of  the 
public,  at  any  rate  for  an  emperor,  and  a  charge 
of  adultery  was  accordingly  trumped  up  against  the 
unfortunate  empress.  This,  however,  gave  rise  to 
agitation  and  disturbance,  for  the  populace  openly 
took  the  part  of  Octavia,  who  was  a  descendant  of 


New  Difficulties  in  the  East  205 

Drusus,  against  Poppaea  whom  they  regarded  as  an 
interloper.  Nero,  encouraged  by  Poppasa,  held  his 
ground,  and  in  the  end  Octavia  was  first  condemned 
to  exile  and  then  killed.  Poppasa  took  her  place,  but 
the  people  cherished  a  lively  and  affectionate  memory 
of  Octavia  which  was  destined  one  day  to  be  useful  to 
the  enemies  of  Nero,  who  were  becoming  ever  more 
numerous. 

While  Nero's  government  was  producing  such  alter- 
nations of  hope,  praise,  criticism,  and  hatred  at 
Rome,  grave  events  were  developing  in  the  provinces. 
The  successes  in  Armenia  which  had  caused  such  re- 
joicings in  59,  had  been  of  short  duration.  In  61  the 
King  of  Parthia  sought  his  revenge.  Having  allied 
himself  with  the  King  of  Adiabene  he  sent  the  latter 
with  part  of  his  army  to  invade  Armenia,  while  he 
himself  prepared  to  attack  Syria,  thus  repeating  the 
double  manoeuvre  attempted  so  often  by  the  Parthian 
kings  in  their  wars  against  Rome.  This  time,  however, 
the  move  seemed  to  Corbulo  to  be  so  threatening,  that 
he  left  Tigranes  with  only  two  legions,  collected  all  the 
rest  of  his  army  in  Syria,  wrote  to  Rome  asking  that 
an  army  under  a  new  general  should  be  sent  to  Armenia 
as  his  own  was  barely  sufficient  to  defend  Syria,  and 
opened  negotiations  with  the  King  of  Parthia  to  induce 
him  to  suspend  the  war  and  send  ambassadors  to 
Rome,  allowing  it  to  be  understood  that  a  settlement 
would  not  be  difficult.  Meanwhile  the  King  of  Adia- 
bene had  unsuccessfully  attempted  to  attack  Tigrano- 
certa  and  had  been  defeated  by  Tigranes  with  the  two 
Roman  legions  and  the  other  forces  at  his  disposal. 
The  King  of  Parthia  was  therefore  prepared  to  listen 
to  Corbulo's  advice  and  sent  the  ambassadors.  Hos- 
tilities were,    accordingly,  suspended,  but  at  Rome 


2o6  Nero 

Corbulo's  prudence,  his  suggestion  that  a  new  army 
should  be  sent  to  Armenia  and  his  negotiations  with 
the  Parthians  had  been  very  badly  received.  As 
has  so  often  happened  to  sagacious  and  prudent  com- 
manders, Corbulo  was  accused  of  cowardice  and  in- 
capacity by  irresponsible  persons  who  formed  their 
opinions  in  peace  and  securit}-  on  the  banks  of  the 
Tiber.  The  embassy  from  Parthia  was  sent  back 
without  an  answer.  Another  general  was  sent  to 
Armenia  as  Corbulo  had  requested,  but  the  selection 
fell  on  a  certain  Cassennius  Patus,  who  boasted 
loudly  that  he  meant  to  follow  a  different  plan  from 
that  of  Corbulo  who,  he  said,  was  a  timid  fellow. 
It  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  appointment  of  Pastus 
was  dictated  by  hostility  to  Corbulo  who,  however, 
was  not  removed  from  Syria. 

Psetus  arrived  in  Armenia  with  his  army,  apparently 
in  the  second  half  of  the  year  6i,  and  commenced  a 
bold  offensive  while  Corbulo  devoted  himself  to 
fortifying  the  line  of  the  Euphrates.  In  the  following 
year,  however,  Psetus  seems  to  have  allowed  himself 
to  be  surprised  with  part  of  his  troops  by  an  attack 
delivered  by  strong  hostile  forces  at  a  place  named 
Randeia  on  the  river  Arsanides,  a  tributary  of  the 
Euphrates.  Having  by  a  skilful  feint  induced  Cor- 
bulo to  mass  the  best  of  his  troops  on  the  Euphrates, 
the  Parthians  had  delivered  their  attack  in  Armenia. 
Corbulo  had  to  rush  his  forces  to  the  assistance  of 
Pastus  who  was  besieged  at  Randeia,  but  he  was 
too  late.  Before  Corbulo  arrived  Paetus  had  sur- 
rendered, and,  in  order  to  save  his  army,  had  pledged 
himself  to  evacuate  Armenia,  which  thus  again  fell 
into  the  hands  of  the  Parthians.  In  spite  of  his 
pledge,  Pastus  is  said  to  have  wished  to  invad.e  Ar- 


New  Difficulties  in  the  East  207 

menia  with  his  own  and  Corbulo's  united  armies,  but 
Corbulo  refused,  and  as  the  King  of  Parthia  had  sent 
to  demand  the  withdrawal  of  the  garrison  posted 
beyond  the  Euphrates,  negotiations  were  again  opened 
and  it  was  agreed  that  the  Roman  armies  should 
retire  behind  that  river,  but  that  the  King  of  Parthia 
should  withdraw  from  Armenia. 

Armenia  thus  became  once  more  free  both  from 
Rome  and  from  Parthia,  and,  though  at  first  an 
attempt  was  made  to  claim  this  result  of  the  war  as  a 
triumph  for  Rome,  the  truth  was  soon  apparent.  All 
efforts  to  gain  a  solid  footing  in  Armenia  had  failed. 
Nero  consulted  all  the  most  eminent  persons  in  the 
empire  and  it  was  decided  to  make  another  attempt. 
Pastus  was  recalled  and  Corbulo  was  placed  in  sole 
command  of  a  strong  force.  Faithful  to  his  original 
method  Corbulo  in  63  used  the  powerful  army  en- 
trusted to  him  as  an  instrument  of  intimidation  with 
a  view  to  reaching  an  agreement.  Rome  and  Parthia 
were,  in  fact,  equally  weak  in  Armenia,  and  thus  it 
was  possible  this  time  to  come  to  terms.  Tigranes 
was  definitely  set  aside.  Vologeses  obtained  what  he 
had  asked  for  in  61,  the  investiture  of  his  brother 
Tiridates  as  King  of  Armenia.  But  the  brother  of 
the  Great  King  had  to  submit  to  receiving  his  regal 
diadem  from  Nero's  hands,  and  had  to  go  to  Rome 
for  that  purpose.  A  Parthian  prince  was  to  sit  on 
the  throne  of  Armenia  as  a  vassal  of  Rome — such 
was  the  effect  of  this  tedious  transaction. 

Meanwhile  the  revolt  of  Britain  had  not  exhausted 
itself.  The  very  energy  of  Suetonius's  repressive 
measures  seemed  to  add  fuel  to  the  flames.  The 
prince  therefore  found  it  necessary  to  order  an  inquiry 
to  be  held  on  the  spot  and  finally  entrusted  the  pro- 


2o8  Nero 

vince  to  a  new  governor  (62).  But  while  it  had 
become  necessary  to  send  reinforcements  from  Ger- 
many to  Britain  and  to  raise  new  levies  for  drafts 
to  fill  up  the  gaps  in  the  decimated  legions,  the  empire 
on  the  line  of  the  Danube  had  to  deal  with  a  series  of 
small  and  intermittent  attacks  by  the  tribes  living 
beyond  the  river  and  had  to  undertake  regular  cam- 
paigns against  the  Sarmatians  and  the  Scythians, ' 
the  success  of  which  raised  the  question  whether  a 
great  Caucasian  expedition  was  not  necessary. 

57.  The  Burning  of  Rome  (July,  64  A.D.).  At 
Rome,  in  the  meantime,  Nero  seemed  to  take  a  pleasure 
in  flouting  even  more  audaciously  that  section  of 
public  opinion  which  was  most  attached  to  tradition. 
It  was  about  this  time,  in  the  year  64,  that  Nero  did 
the  maddest  thing  he  had  done  since  the  murder  of 
his  mother — he  appeared  on  the  stage  in  the  theatre 
at  Neapolis,  before  a  regular  audience,  as  a  public 
singer.  He  had  not  chosen  Neapolis  as  the  scene  of 
his  artistic  debut  by  chance,  for  Naples  was  then  a 
Greek  city  where  Roman  prejudices  were  unknown. 
Nevertheless  it  is  easy  to  imagine  what  were  the  feel- 
ings of  Italy  and  of  Rome  on  hearing  of  this  extrava- 
gant proceeding  on  the  part  of  the  son  of  Agrippina. 
The  Romans  regarded  the  stage  as  an  infamous 
profession,  however  necessar}'  it  m.ight  be  to  the 
pleasure  of  mankind.  That  a  Claudius,  the  descend- 
ant of  the  most  ancient  and  illustrious  family  of  the 
Roman  nobility,  should  condescend  to  appear  on  the 
stage  in  the  dress  of  a  player  and  solicit  the  applause 
of  an  audience  of  Greeks  was  a  scandal  which  in  a 

'  There  is  no  mention  of  these  wars  in  the  ancient  writers,  but 
they  are  vouched  for  by  the  evidence  of  inscriptions,  cf.  C.  I.  L., 
xiv.,  3608. 


The  Burning  of  Rome  209 

sense  was  worse  than  a  crime!  A  crime  might  excite 
horror ;  an  action  such  as  this  excited  merely  contempt 
and  disgust.  For  men  who  have  to  rule  over  their 
fellows  it  is  better  to  inspire  neither  horror  nor  con- 
tempt nor  disgust,  but  of  the  three  evils  to  inspire 
horror  is  the  least. 

The  effects  of  this  caprice,  however,  were  not  im- 
mediately visible,  for  a  great  calamity  shortly  after- 
wards occurred  which  distracted  public  attention  from 
it.  This  was  the  fire,  famous  in  all  history,  which 
broke  out  in  Rome  in  July,  64,  and  devastated  the  city 
for  ten  days,  destroying,  practically  completely,  ten  of 
the  fourteen  districts  into  which  it  had  been  divided 
by  Augustus.  Immediately  on  hearing  of  the  disaster, 
Nero  returned  hastily  to  the  capital  where,  however, 
he  was  unable  to  prevent  the  destruction  of  his  own 
house.  He  did  all  he  could  to  mitigate  the  irreparable 
loss  which  had  been  sustained.  He  opened  the 
public  buildings  and  his  own  gardens  to  the  people 
who  had  been  made  homeless;  from  the  neighbouring 
towns  he  sent  for  everything  necessary  for  the  repair 
and  equipment  of  these  temporary  shelters  as  far  as 
that  was  possible,  and  he  took  energetic  measures 
to  provide  against  the  still  greater  calamity  of  famine. 

All  the  emperor's  zeal,  however,  could  not  prevent  a 
strange  riunour,  as  to  the  cause  of  the  fire,  spreading 
among  the  people  more  swiftly  than  the  flames  which 
had  destroyed  the  city.  A  whole  library  has  been 
written  on  this  question,  so  many  are  the  hypotheses, 
as  ingenious  as  ill-supported,  which  have  been  framed 
to  account  for  this  memorable  conflagration.  There  is 
indeed  no  means  of  proving  that  Rome  was  burned 
by  Nero,  or  that  the  fire  was  started  by  the  Christians 
or  by  the  friends  of  Piso  with  whom  we  shall  shortly 


2IO  Nero 

have  to  deal.  The  most  simple  and  probable  ex- 
planation will  always  be  that  Rome  was  burned  by 
accident  like  so  many  other  cities.  Americans  know 
that  the  burning  of  an  entire  town  is  unfortunately  a 
catastrophe  which  is  anything  but  uncommon  in 
countries  where  most  of  the  houses  are  still  built  of 
wood,  and  such  was  the  case  in  Rome  at  that  time, 
especially  in  the  poorer  quarters.  On  the  other 
hand  it  is  clearly  much  more  probable  that  in  the  hot 
season  a  fire  which  began  accidentally  in  a  few  houses 
would  spread  to  whole  quarters,  especially  if  the  fire 
brigade  was  deficient,  than  that  a  single  man  or  a 
group  of  men  should  conceive  the  extraordinary  idea 
of  burning  a  whole  city  and  should  rucceed  in  their 
design.  But  the  first  impulse  of  men  when  stricken 
by  a  great  disaster  is  to  attribute  it  to  their  own  kind. 
When  there  is  scarcity  they  blame  speculators  in 
food;  when  their  armies  are  defeated  they  suspect 
treason;  when  there  is  an  epidemic  they  say  that  they 
have  been  poisoned.  So  in  those  days  the  Roman 
people  became  convinced  that  the  city  had  been  mali- 
ciously set  on  fire.  But  by  whom?  We  must  not 
forget  that  Nero  by  his  excesses,  his  prodigalities  and 
his  crimes,  by  his  easy  and  free-handed  government  at 
once  attracted  and  terrified  the  popular  mind.  It  is 
therefore  not  surprising  that  the  burning  of  Rome 
appeared  to  the  masses  as  a  divine  punishment  for 
the  new  and  illicit  pleasures  which  for  ten  years  the 
prince  and  his  people  had  together  enjoyed,  and  for 
all  the  excesses  to  which  he  had  given  himself  up  and 
into  the  vortex  of  which  the  people  had  been  swept. 
From  this  state  of  mind,  in  which  they  were  ready  to 
believe  in  any  criminal  origin  of  the  fire,  it  was  but  a 
step  to  the  conviction  that  it  had  been  deliberately 


Christians  and  ''the  First  Persecution"  211 

contrived  by  the  emperor  himself.  The  story  was  in 
fact  that  Rome  had  been  burned  by  Nero's  orders 
and,  though  (as  Tacitus  himself  admits)  this  was 
absurd,  it  was  beheved  by  many. 

58.  The  Christians  and  "  the  First  Persecution.  " 
The  beHef  that  the  fire  was  the  work  of  criminals 
was  so  general  that  the  authorities  had  to  institute 
an  inquiry  for  the  purpose  of  discovering  the  guilty 
parties.  The  conclusion  of  this  investigation  laid  the 
responsibility  for  the  conflagration  at  the  door  of  the 
Christians,  a  religious. sect  the  name  of  which  was  for 
the  first  time  publicly  pronounced  on  this  occasion. 
This  sect  had  come  into  being  about  forty  years 
previously  in  Judasa  in  the  bosom  of  Judaism.  For 
centuries  the  Jews  had  expected  that  God  would 
send  them  a  Messiah  who  would  rescue  the  people 
from  servitude  and  restore  them  to  their  pristine 
glory  and  independence,  and  would  make  them,  in  re- 
tiirn  for  their  perfect  observation  of  the  divine  law, 
the  chosen  people  on  earth.  Towards  the  end  of  the 
eighth  century  after  the  foundation  of  Rome  the 
Messiah  had  appeared  in  the  villages  and  townships 
of  Judaea  declaring  himself  to  be  the  Son  of  God,  but 
proclaiming,  not  a  national  revival  but  the  approaching 
end  of  the  world  and  the  near  advent  of  the  Kingdom 
of  God.  On  this  great  day  the  Messiah  would  appear 
in  the  clouds  surrounded  by  angels,  his  disciples  would 
sit  round  him  on  thrones,  the  dead  would  arise  and 
the  Messiah  would  proceed  to  judgment.  The  good 
and  the  elect  clothed  in  light  would  participate  in  the 
eternal  feast  prepared  by  Abraham,  while  the  con- 
demned would  be  sent  to  Gehenna.  Men  should 
prepare  themselves  for  the  Kingdom  of  God  which 
was  imminent,  by  listening  to  the  Messiah,  by  freeing 


212  Nero 

religion  from  all  the  external  forms  and  fetters  by 
which  Judaism  had,  as  it  were,  shackled  it,  and  by 
practising  a  system  of  morality  of  sublime  nobility 
and  purity.  The  supreme  law  of  the  spirit,  was  to 
be  love,  fraternity,  peace  between  master  and  servant, 
between  man  and  woman,  between  Jew  and  Roman, 
between  citizen  and  foreigner,  and  hatred  against  the 
negation  of  all  these  things,  the  hypocrisy  of  the 
Pharisee,  the  avarice  of  the  rich,  the  pride  of  the  great. 
It  was  to  be  a  spiritual  hatred,  however,  not  the  vio- 
lence of  rebellion ;  for  the  beginnings  of  the  Kingdom  of 
God  were  in  the  souls  of  those  who  were  converted. 

The  herald  of  God's  Kingdom  found  in  Judsea  a 
certain  number  of  devoted  disciples,  but  his  work  was 
soon  cut  short  by  the  persecutions  of  the  decadent 
Jews.  After  the  death  of  Jesus,  however,  the  new 
sect,  persecuted  in  Juda;a  had  crossed  the  borders  of 
that  country  under  the  guidance  of  the  first  and  most 
faithful  disciples  and  had  gradually  diffused  itself 
over  the  whole  empire  among  Jews  and  pagans  alike, 
multiplying  its  little  communities  in  great  cities  and 
small.  For  the  original  announcement  of  the  King- 
dom of  God,  of  the  end  of  the  world,  and  the  Last 
Judgment  which  was  to  follow  the  appearance  of  the 
Messiah,  had  been  substituted — and  to  this  had  greatly 
contributed  Paul  of  Tarsus  a  remarkable  man  con- 
verted to  the  sect  after  the  death  of  Jesus  Christ — 
the  doctrine  of  the  redemption  of  mankind  from 
original  sin  and  from  evil  which  had  been  achieved 
by  the  blood  of  Jesus  Christ  the  Son  of  God  who  had 
sacrificed  Himself  on  the  cross.  To  the  moral  system 
of  Jesus,  which  above  all  inculcated  brotherly  love, 
was  added— this  too  partly  as  a  result  of  Paul's  work 
— the  doctrine  that  the  love  of  Christ  required  men 


Christians  and  'Hhe  First  Persecution]'  213 

to  repress  the  strongest  passions  known  to  Grasco- 
Roman  society,  which  were  sensuality  and  cupidity. 
Thus  the  new  Christian  sect  had  entirely  separated 
itself  from  Judaism  and  had  even  abandoned  circum- 
cision, one  of  its  most  ancient  and  venerated  rites. 
For  thirty  years  it  had  been  slowly  propagating  itself 
in  the  Roman  Empire  and  had  penetrated  into  Rome 
itself,  where  it  had  made  many  converts,  especially 
among  the  lower  classes — slaves,  freedmen,  and 
foreigners  of  oriental  origin.  Perhaps  too  in  the  time 
of  Claudius,  its  growing  importance  had  given  rise 
to  a  violent  reaction  against  it  on  the  part  of  the 
numerous  Jews  living  in  the  capital.' 

It  would  be  difficult  to  say  what  led  the  Roman 
government  to  charge  with  the  burning  of  Rome  this 
sect  which  had  devoted  itself  to  elaborating  a  system 
of  the  most  sublime  morality.  It  is  possible  that  the 
wild  excesses  of  Nero  and  the  burning  of  Rome  seemed 
to  many  Christians  to  be  the  very  calamities  which, 
according  to  Jesus,  would  precede  the  end  of  the  world 
and  the  advent  of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  Moreover, 
among  the  pagans  in  the  city,  there  was  much  distrust 
of  the  secret  ceremonies  and  singular  practices  of  the 
Christians  and,  what  was  more  serious,  the  Jews  and 
the  Christians  at  Rome,  as  everywhere  else,  were  at 
daggers  drawn.  It  is  therefore  not  improbable  that 
the  satisfaction  or  indifference  which  many  Christians 
showed  about  the  fire  which  was  the  beginning,  so 
they  said,  of  the  end  of  all  things,  were  promptly 
accepted  as  evidence  of  their  guilt,  that  the  vague 
suspicions  which  were  current  were  at  once  diverted 
from  the  prince  who  required  a  scapegoat  on  whom 
the    public    could    wreak    vengeance,    and    that    the 

'  Suet.,  Claud.,  25. 


^14  Nero 

charge  was  brought  home  to  the  Christians  by  the 
calumnious  delation  of  the  Jews  and  by  the  confes- 
sions extracted  by  torture  from  the  weaker  of  those 
who  were  first  accused. '  Thus  began  what  is  known 
as  the  first  persecution  of  the  Christians,  which,  how- 
ever, is  incorrectly  so  described  because,  though  the 
Christians  were  the  victims  of  persecution,  they  were 
not  persecuted  because  they  were  Christians.* 

59.  The  Rebuilding  of  Rome;  a  Great  Financial 
Crisis  Throughout  the  Empire.  The  fire  had  been  a 
calamity  but  not  an  irreparable  one.  It  was  left  to 
Nero  to  aggravate  the  loss  by  his  ambition  to  build 
at  once  on  the  ruins  of  the  old  city  a  new  one  of  sur- 
passing beauty.  The  city  which  had  been  destroyed 
was  the  old  town  which  had  been  hurriedly  rebuilt  on 
the  ruins  caused  by  the  fire  at  the  time  of  the  Gallic 
invasion.  It  had  grown  up,  century  by  century, 
as  chance  dictated.  It  had  been  embellished  as  far  as 
was  possible  by  Agrippa  and  Augustus,  but  in  the 
mass  it  was  a  rude  city  if  contrasted  with  the  great 
capitals  of  the  East.  Nero  wished  to  give  the  empire 
a  capital  whose  beauty  and  magnificence  were  equal 
to  the  empire's  power  and  glory.  His  idea  was  not 
wanting  in  greatness  and  nobility,  but  enormous 
sums  of  money  were  required  in  order  to  carry  it  out 
rapidly,  and  to  procure  these  Nero  had  recourse  to  the 
most  perilous  expedients.  Most  of  the  sudden  con- 
demnations and  confiscations  in  cases  of  treason,  the 
fines  for  new  and  strange  offences,  the  whole  long 

'  Tac,  Ann.,  xv.,  44;  prima  correpti  qui  fatebantur. 

^  On  the  burning  of  Rome  as  on  all  insoluble  historical  prob- 
lems, a  whole  library  has  been  written.  One  of  the  most  recent 
studies  is  that  of  C.  Pascal,  Llncendio  di  Roma  e  i  primi  cris- 
tiani,  in  Fatti  e  leggende  di  storia  antica,  Firenze,  1903. 


The  Conspiracy  of  Piso  215 

series  of  pecuniary  penalties  which  contemporaries 
and  posterity  alike  have  attributed  to  the  unexampled 
ferocity  of  the  prince  and  his  ministers,  were  really 
due  to  this  want  of  money.  But,  as  these  sources 
proved  insufficient,  the  empire  was  bled  white.  From 
the  most  famous  sanctuaries,  from  public  buildings 
and  private  houses  were  torn  the  precious  offerings  of 
the  faithful,  the  images  of  the  gods,  the  most  valued 
statues.  Public  offices  and  contracts  were  again  put 
up  to  auction,  and  governors  were  once  more  com- 
pelled to  make  mone}^  out  of  the  subject  populations. 
The  burden  of  taxation  was  made  heavier  and  there 
was  a  revival  of  the  most  pedantic  methods  of  extor- 
tion. Nor  was  Italy  immune  from  the  scourge. 
Immediately  after  the  fire  Nero  ordered  a  general 
contribution  to  meet  the  most  pressing  needs  of  the 
city  and  the  people  of  Rome.  In  addition  to  this 
he  began  in  the  same  year  to  depreciate  the  coinage 
by  issuing  light  money.  The  aureus  which,  as  coined 
by  Augustus,  had  been  practically  pure,  fell  from  an 
average  of  7.64  to  7.36  grammes,  and  the  fine  silver 
denarius  of  the  first  days  of  the  empire  was  reduced 
from  3.90  to  3.40  grammes  while  the  percentage  of 
alloy  rose  from  5  to  10  per  cent.  It  was  Nero  who 
commenced  the  bad  currency  policy  of  the  empire 
which  was  destined  to  have  such  evil  results. 

60.  The  Conspiracy  of  Piso  (65  A.D.)-  All  these 
circtimstances  explain  why  the  two  years  which 
followed  the  burning  of  Rome  were  the  most  critical  in 
Nero's  reign,  and  why  in  the  year  65  there  was  a  great 
conspiracy  among  the  aristocracy  against  the  emperor. 
The  head  of  this  movement,  C.  Calpurnius  Piso,  be- 
longed to  one  of  the  noblest  Roman  families.  With 
him  participated  in  the  plot  senators  and  knights, 


2i6  Nero 

plebians  and  republicans  of  the  straitest  sect,  officers 
of  the  praetorian  guard  (among  whom  was  actually 
one  of  the  two  prasfects,  Faenius  Rufus  the  colleague  of 
Tigellinus),  the  poet  Lucan  and,  finally  vSeneca,  Nero's 
old  tutor.  It  appears  that  the  object  of  the  con- 
spirators was  to  kill  Nero  and  make  Piso  emperor  in 
his  place.  The  plot  was  discovered  by  a  mere  acci- 
dent and,  as  might  be  expected,  was  punished  with 
merciless  severity.  Trials  and  condemnations  lasted 
through  all  the  year  65  and  went  on  into  the  following 
year.  Lucan,  Seneca,  and  C.  Petronius,  whose  work 
is  so  much  appreciated  nowadays,  and  a  great  number 
of  senators  and  officers  fell  victims.  And  after  the 
conspiracy  was  suppressed,  as  often  happens  in  such 
cases,  Nero,  whether  intoxicated  with  his  own  power 
or  exasperated  by  the  terror  he  had  suffered,  far  from 
reforming  his  wa^^s,  went  from  bad  to  worse  and 
abandoned  himself  entirely  to  his  unbridled  passions. 

61.  Nero's  Journey  to  Greece  and  the  Revolt  of 
Judaea.  Towards  the  end  of  66,  the  emperor  left 
Italy  for  Greece  accompanied  by  a  crowd  of  Augus- 
tani,  admirers  and  claqueurs,  an  army  large  enough — 
it  was  said — to  take  the  field  against  the  Great  King. 
Nero  intended  to  take  part  in  the  contests  of  the 
periodic  Greek  Games  which  he  had  ordered  to  be 
performed  together  all  in  one  year!  Never  had  a 
prince  been  seen  to  degrade  himself,  according  to 
Roman  ideas,  in  a  manner  so  indecorous  in  the  presence 
of  his  oriental  subjects.  A  prince  who  was  an  actor 
was  for  the  Romans  the  last  and  worst  disgrace. 

Nero  had  scarcely  arrived  in  Greece,  however,  when 
news  reached  him  of  grave  events  in  Judaea.  That 
country  had  suffered  from  a  prolonged  crisis  ever  since 
the  time  when  within  its  narrow  borders  the  Syrian 


Nero' s  Journey  to  Greece;  Revolt  of  Jiidcea  217 

Hellenism  of  Grseco-Macedonian  colonists,  with  its 
cosmopolitan  tendencies, its  scepticism,  and  its  material 
sensualism  had  come  face  to  face  with  the  native 
Mosaic  rehgion.  That  religion  was  at  the  same  time 
the  most  living  and  the  most  exclusive  of  oriental 
creeds,  and  a  body  of  rites  and  rules  of  piety,  of  pur- 
ity, and  of  conduct  in  practical  affairs  which  knit 
together  like  the  links  of  a  coat  of  mail  the  life  of  each 
individual  Israelite  with  the  entire  national  life.  Its 
exclusive  spirit  had  strengthened  the  national  aversion 
from  foreign  government,  and  vice  versa,  as  had  been 
proved  by  the  history  of  the  Seleucid  monarchy  which 
owed  its  tragic  fall  in  great  part  to  this  circumstance. 
Roman  policy  had  profited  by  the  critical  state  of  the 
country,  but  Rome  had  soon  found  herself  face  to  face 
with  the  same  difficulties — that  is  to  say  she  had  to 
govern  a  country  in  which  religion  fomented  political 
discontent,  and  political  discontent  with  a  foreign 
rule  exacerbated  religious  fanaticism.  Little  by  little, 
while  the  Roman  rule  was  being  consolidated  in  Judaea, 
the  country  was  invaded  by  Italians  and  Greeks 
who,  with  the  aid  of  the  government,  exploited 
the  country  as  best  they  could.  As  the  pressure  of  the 
tribute  to  which  the  country  was  subjected  under  the 
Roman  government  gradually  increased,  the  religious 
intransigence  of  the  masses  became  more  ferocious; 
once  more  announcements  of  the  imminent  arrival  of 
the  Messiah  who  this  time  was  to  liberate  Judaea 
and  not  establish  the  Kingdom  of  God,  had  begun  to 
agitate  the  minds  of  the  people.  An  anti -Roman 
party — the  so-called  Zealots — as  implacable  against 
their  luke-warm  compatriots  as  against  the  foreigner, 
had  inaugurated  a  veritable  reign  of  terror  in  Judaea, 
justifying  the  habits  of  brigandage  common  among 


2 1 8  Nero 

certain  tribes  in  Palestine  by  religious  and  nationalist 
enthusiasm.  For  many  years  the  cities  and  the  coun- 
try of  Judasa  had  been  distracted  by  murders  and 
fighting  in  which  religious  fanaticism  and  hatred  of 
greedy  and  domineering  foreigners  found  expression 
along  with  the  anarchical  instincts  latent  in  so  many 
individuals  and  peoples.  The  situation  became  more 
serious  in  65  and  66  owing  to  the  question  of  the 
administration  of  Ca^sarea  which  the  Jews  wished  to 
be  Jewish  and  the  Greeks  Greek.  After  much  dis- 
order, rioting,  and  negotiation,  rebellion  openly  broke 
out  towards  the  middle  of  66.  At  the  end  of  Septem- 
ber in  that  year  the  small  Roman  garrison  which  had 
barricaded  itself  in  the  three  forts  dominating  Jeru- 
salem capitulated  and  was  put  to  the  sword,  and  the 
troubles  in  Judsea  spread  to  the  whole  of  the  south  of 
Syria,  as  far  as  Egypt,  where,  in  the  larger  and  smaller 
cities  the  Jews  made  attempts  at  revolutionary  move- 
ments. Cestius  Gallus,  the  governor  of  Syria,  hastily 
collected  an  army  and  resolutely  invaded  Palestine, 
having  decided  to  annihilate  the  insurrection  by  a 
single  blow.  At  the  price  of  heavy  sacrifices  Cestius 
succeeded  in  entering  Jerusalem,  but  could  not  manage 
to  take  the  temple,  within  whose  walls  the  rebel  army 
had  fortified  itself.  Being  unable  to  maintain  himself 
in  the  hostile  city  he  decided  to  leave  Jerusalem  and 
encamp  in  the  vicinity,  but  during  his  retreat  was 
attacked  by  the  revolutionary  troops,  suffered  serious 
losses,  and  was  compelled  to  withdraw  as  far  as  Anti- 
patria. 

62.  Titus  Flavius  Vespasianus.  The  impression 
made  at  Rome  may  easily  be  imagined.  All  Nero's 
enemies  loudly  demanded  what  was  to  be  the  end 
of  the  emperor's  much  vaunted  foreign  policy.     In 


Titus  Flavins   Vespasianus  219 

Armenia,  after  tremendous  efforts  a  peace  had  been 
first  refused  and  then  accepted  which  impHed  the  final 
renunciation  of  Armenia  itself.'  In  Britain  peace 
had  been  purchased  at  the  price  of  conceding  the 
demands  of  the  natives,^  and  there  were  ceaseless 
wars  with  the  Trans-Danubian  and  Caucasian  tribes. 
Now,  in  addition  to  all  this,  they  had  to  contend  with  a 
rebellion  in  Judaea !  The  emperor,  it  must  be  admitted, 
met  the  danger  promptly  and  energetically  by  finding 
the  man  who  was  needed,  not  among  the  illustrious 
descendants  of  ancient  families.  That  man  was  T. 
Flavius  Vespasianus,  a  senator  whose  nobility  was  of 
very  recent  origin.  His  grandfather,  Titus  Flavius 
Petronius,  came  from  Reate  and  was  a  modest  plebian 
who  had  fought  at  Pharsalia  as  a  centurion  under 
Pompey  and  had  afterwards  been  pardoned  by  Cassar. 
Flavius  Sabinus,  the  son  of  the  centurion,  had  grown 
rich  as  a  tax  farmer  and  banker,  first  in  Asia  and  then 
among  the  Helvetii.  He  had  two  sons  both  of  whom 
had  taken  up  a  political  career  (being  the  first  members 
of  their  family  to  do  so)  and  had  entered  the  senate. 
Of  these  Vespasian  was  the  younger.  He  had  occu- 
pied the  whole  series  of  public  offices,  including  the 
consulship,  had  campaigned  in  Britain  under  Claudius, 
though  without  any  special  distinction,  and  had  kept 
himself  safely  apart  from  the  serious  dangers  of  in- 
tervening in  the  struggles  by  which  Rome  was  dis- 
tracted at  that  time.  To  this  obscure  senator  Nero 
now  entrusted  the  direction  of  the  war  in  Judcca,  and 

'  These  criticisms  may  be  traced  rather  in  the  authors  followed 
by  Eutropius  than  in  Tacitus,  Eutrop.,  7,  [Nero]  imperium  ro- 
manum  et  deformavit  et  diminuit.  .  .  .  Armeniam  Parthi  sus- 
tulerunt. 

^  Cf.  Tac,  Ann.,  xiv.,  38  and  39. 


220  Nero 

placed  at  his  disposal  immense  forces  collected  from 

all  parts  of  the  empire. 

63.  The  War  in  Judaea  (67  A.D.).  The  Jewish 
war  was  destined  to  be  one  of  the  most  terrible 
in  the  history  of  Rome.  True,  the  Hebrews  lacked 
the  concord  and  organization  which  alone  make  it 
possible  to  carry  on  war  against  a  powerful  State 
possessed  of  powerful  forces.  The  upper  classes, 
though  they  desired  independence,  thought  the 
Romans  invincible,  and  had  a  horror  of  the  religious 
and  nationalist  fanaticism  from  which  the  rebellion 
had  taken  its  rise,  and  in  which  they  clearly  perceived 
the  germs  of  a  social  revolution.  The  rebels,  there- 
fore, were  unable  to  find  among  the  classes  which 
alone  could  supply  them,  a  sufficient  number  of  trust- 
worthy leaders  who  could  co-ordinate  the  national 
forces  and  discipline  the  popular  fanaticism.  But 
this  fanaticism  was  so  intense  and  so  highly  stimu- 
lated by  the  Zealots,  among  whom  were  to  be  found 
enthusiasts  of  all  classes,  that,  even  without  a  supreme 
control  to  co-ordinate  their  forces,  the  resistance  of 
Judasa,  scattered  though  it  was  over  a  great  number 
of  centres,  was  terrible.  When  in  67  Vespasian 
entered  the  rebellious  province  at  the  head  of  60,000 
men,  he  had  to  reconquer  it  city  by  city,  village  by 
village,  at  the  cost  of  unheard-of  slaughter.  It  took 
a  whole  year  to  reconquer  Galilee.  It  was  not  until  68 
that  the  Roman  general  was  able  to  enter  Judaea 
proper  and  even  then  it  was  not  to  march  straight  on 
Jerusalem,  which  was  the  main  centre  of  resistance, 
but  to  conquer  in  the  first  place  the  minor  centres 
which  were  numerous.  Although  dissensions  had 
broken  out,  between  the  Zealots  and  the  Moderates, 
who   had  lost  hope   and   wished   to  treat   with   the 


War  in  the  Caucasus;  Revolt  in  the  West  221 

Romans,  Vespasian  had  a  desperate  struggle,  especi- 
ally before  the  walls  of  Jericho.  And  when  Jericho 
fell  at  the  end  of  May,  and  his  way  to  Jerusalem  lay 
open,  grave  events  in  the  West  jeopardized  the  whole 
result  of  this  long  and  sanguinary  conflict. 

64.  Preparations  for  a  Great  War  in  the  Caucasus 
and  the  Revolt  in  the  West  (67-68  A.D.).  Nero  had 
gone  to  Greece  in  67  squandering  money,  seeking 
to  revive  the  customs  and  traditions  of  the  past  and 
busying  himself  with  games  and  feasting.  These 
however  did  not  quite  exhaust  his  activities  for 
Nero  who,  as  we  have  repeatedly  said,  was  not  without 
a  certain  largeness  of  view  in  public  affairs,  formed 
the  plan  of  cutting  through  the  Isthmus  of  Corinth 
and  was  preparing  another  expedition  to  the  extreme 
eastern  boundaries  of  Europe  which  Pompey  alone, 
in  the  course  of  his  weary  pursuit  of  Mithridates, 
had  seen  and  known,  to  the  so-called  PortcE  CaspicB 
in  the  region  of  the  Caucasus.  This  expedition  was 
undoubtedly  intended  to  dam  up  once  and  for  all  the 
insistent  and  annoying  raids  of  the  Scythian  and  Sar- 
matian  tribes  into  the  most  easterly  European  pro- 
vinces. The  emperor  had  been  meditating  this 
enterprise  for  years,  but  his  plan  had  been  frequently 
postponed  and  it  was  only  now  that  he  had  definitely 
made  up  his  mind  to  carry  it  into  execution.  He  had 
taken  important  steps  with  this  object,  had  raised 
two  new  legions,  and  had  detached  numerous  units 
from  all  the  legions  of  the  eastern  and  western  armies. 
The  levies  of  citizens  from  the  provinces  had  been 
made  more  strict,  Italy  herself  had  had  to  furnish  a 
contingent  of  her  own,  a  legio  Italica  which  was 
denominated  the  Phalanx  Alexandri  anA.  was  destined 
to  be  placed  under  the  orders  of  the  new  Alexander 


222  Nero 

the  Great.'  But  in  the  midst  of  these  plans  and 
dreams,  in  the  midst  of  the  feasts  and  the  excursions 
to  which  he  gave  himself  up  during  the  winter  of 
67-68,  the  emperor  was  informed  that  the  situation 
in  Italy  was  giving  cause  for  concern.  He  therefore 
returned  thither  at  the  beginning  of  68  just  in  time  to 
hear  that  an  insurrection  had  broken  out  in  Gaul. 

The  governor  of  Gallia  Lugdunensis  who  had  taken 
the  initiative  in  this  revolt  was  a  Romanized  Gallic 
nobleman  of  Aquitania  named  C.  Julius  Vindex. 
That  a  Roman  of  such  recent  date  whose  ancestors 
had  been  Celtic  barbarians  should  have  been  the  first 
to  feel  it  his  duty  to  rise  in  rebellion  against  the  un- 
bridled orientalism  of  Nero  was  no  mere  accident. 
It  is  the  first  instance  of  a  phenomenon  the  historic 
importance  of  which  we  shall  soon  see — the  force 
which  Roman  ideas  and  sentiments  had  acquired 
among  the  upper  classes  in  the  western  provinces. 
In  northern  Italy,  in  Spain,  and  in  Gaul  there  were 
rich  families  which,  though  they  had  been  Romanized 
for  only  a  few  generations,  were  more  fervid  in  their 
attachment  to  the  traditions  of  the  aristocratic 
republic  than  the  ancient  families  of  the  Roman 
nobility.  However  that  may  be,  the  attempt  of 
Vindex  does  not  seem  to  have  been  in  itself  very 
dangerous.  Not  having  an  army  he  had  tried  to 
collect  one  secretly  among  the  Gauls,  and  had  at  the 
same  time  endeavoured  to  excite  against  Nero  several 
generals  whom  he  believed  to  be  at  variance  with  the 
emperor.  But  only  one  of  these  lent  an  ear  to  his 
solicitations  and  that  was  Servius  Sulpicius  Galba, 

'  On  this  design  cj.  Pfitzner,  Geschichte  der  Kaiserlegionen, 
Leipzig,  1881 ,  pp.  39  ff.  Henderson,  The  Life  ''J  the  Emperor  Nero, 
London,  1903,  pp. 226-227. 


End  of  Nero;  Fall  of  Julio-Claudian  House  223 

the  governor  of  Hispania  Tarraconensis.  He  was  a 
serious,  energetic  person,  a  rich  man  of  very  ancient 
lineage,  by  family  tradition  little  inclined  to  the 
Julio-Claudian  house,  and  like  all  the  serious  portion 
of  the  nobility,  disgusted  by  Nero's  misgovernment. 
On  the  death  of  Caligula  he  had  been  spoken  of  among 
others  as  a  possible  emperor.  Thus  when  Vindex 
raised  the  standard  of  revolt  he  found  himself  alone, 
and  Nero,  without  very  much  anxiety  was  able  to 
direct  the  governor  of  German]  a  Superior,  Lucius 
Virginius  Rufus,  to  repress  this  attempt  at  rebellion. 
Virginius  in  fact  beat  Vindex,  who  committed  suicide, 
in  a  short  battle  at  Vesontium  (Besangon).  But 
Nero  had  no  cause  to  rejoice  at  the  victory,  for  the 
victorious  arm}'-  had  proclaimed  Virginius  emperor  on 
the  field  of  battle,  and  this  was  followed  by  the  revolt 
of  Galba  and  the  Spanish  legions. 

65.  The  End  of  Nero  and  the  Fall  of  the  Julio- 
Claudian  House  (June,  68).  Nero  tried  to  resist 
his  fate.  He  caused  the  senate  to  declare  Galba  a 
public  enemy.  He  ordered  the  forces  which  had  been 
despatched  to  the  PortcB  CaspicB  to  turn  back,  and 
directed  that  the  sailors  of  the  fleet  at  Misenum,  the 
former  murderers  of  Agrippina,  should  be  organized 
in  legions  and  kept  ready  to  embark  for  Spain.  He 
sent  couriers  to  the  legions  in  Illyria  with  orders  to 
proceed  to  Aquileia.  He  decreed  a  special  war  tax, 
armed  slaves,  public  and  private,  and,  emboldened  by 
the  gravity  of  the  situation,  he  deposed  the  consuls 
whom  he  did  not  trust  and  declared  that  he  himself 
would  lead  his  legions  against  the  rebels.  But  his 
fate  depended  on  the  loyalty  of  the  army,  more 
especially  on  that  of  the  praetorian  guard,  and  by  his 
crimes,  his  excesses,  and  his  extravagances  Nero  was 


224  TVero 

too  much  discredited  even  in  the  opinion  of  the  mass 
of  the  population  and  therefore  of  the  soldiery.  En- 
couraged by  the  growing  signs  of  a  breakup  of  the 
government,  the  senators  hostile  to  Nero  and  the 
friends  of  Galba  did  all  they  could  to  undermine  this 
loyalty.  It  seems  certain  that  they  succeeded  in 
coming  to  an  understanding  with  Nymphidius  Sabinus, 
one  of  the  two  praefects  of  the  praetorians  and  the  col- 
league of  Tigellinus,  and  through  him  with  some  of  the 
officers  and  part  of  the  guard  itself,  even  it  is  said  with 
a  Germanic  cohort  which  was  specially  charged  with 
the  personal  safety  of  the  emperor.  When,  however, 
Nero  understood  that  he  was  faced  with  a  conspiracy 
on  a  larger  scale  than  Piso's,  that  his  own  praetorians 
were  betraying  him,  he  completely  lost  his  head, 
and  with  a  few  friends  and  some  soldiers,  who,  he 
believed,  would  be  faithful  to  the  last,  he  fled  for 
refuge  to  the  Horti  Serviliani  on  the  Via  Ostiensis 
which  had  already  sheltered  him  during  the  conspiracy 
of  Piso. 

The  prince  having  disappeared,  the  government 
automatically  reverted  to  the  senate,  but  the  majority 
of  Nero's  enemies  did  not  agree  among  themselves. 
Some  wished  to  restore  the  republic  forthwith.  Others 
desired  to  entrust  the  defence  of  the  State  to  Galba, 
others  to  make  Virginius  Rufus  emperor.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  leaders  of  the  movement  among  the 
praetorians,  though  inclined  to  depose  Nero,  had 
absolutely  decided  not  to  give  up  any  of  the  privileges 
which  the  empire  had  procured  for  them  and  in 
particular  the  right  to  make  a  profit  out  of  the  new 
transfer  of  the  imperial  dignity.  Nymphidius  Sabinus 
cut  the  knot  of  these  uncertainties  by  convoking  the 
praetorians  and  persuading  them  that,  as  Nero  had 


End  of  Nero;  Fall  of  Julio-Claudian  House  225 

disappeared,  their  only  course  was  to  unite  themselves 
with  the  Spanish  legions  and  proclaim  Galba  emperor. 
The  energy  of  the  soldiers  once  again  overbore  the 
hesitations  and  discord  of  the  senate. 

The  senate  was  now  no  longer  free  to  choose.  If 
they  decided  against  the  proclamation  of  the  praetor- 
ians, they  were  setting  themselves  up  in  opposition 
to  the  forces  in  Spain  and  at  Rome,  and  again  raising 
the  chances  of  the  Neronian  minority.  If  on  the 
other  hand  they  accepted  the  decision  of  the  praetor- 
ians, they  were  abdicating  their  own  will.  There  was 
a  sharp  struggle  and  a  long  discussion  in  the  senate. 
The  coalition  of  various  opposition  groups  easily 
secured  a  decision  in  favour  of  the  deposition  of  the 
reigning  prince  and  of  his  being  declared  an  enemy 
of  the  State  {hostis  publicus)  but  in  spite  of  this  it  was 
found  impossible  at  a  single  sitting  to  decide  who  the 
new  emperor  was  to  be.  Indeed  the  people  believed 
that  the  republic  was  at  once  to  be  restored  and  pre- 
pared great  demonstrations  of  joy  such  as  Brutus 
and  Cassius  had  vainly  hoped  for  a  hundred  and  ten 
years  before  on  the  fatal  Ides  of  March.  But  the 
republic  could  not  be  ruled  without  force.  The 
senate  had  no  arms  and  the  generals  whom  they  be- 
lieved to  be  most  faithful  to  the  republic  such  as, 
for  example,  Virginius  Rufus  were  far  away.  A 
second  sitting  decided  the  fortune  of  the  State.  They 
had  no  alternative  but  to  concur  in  the  election  of 
Servius  Sulpicius  Galba.' 

The  empire  was  safe  but  Nero  was  lost.     He  had 

'  There  were  certainly  two  sittings  (Zon.,  xi.-i3)  though  in 
Zonaras  neither  the  programme  assigned  to  each  nor  the  interval 
between  the  two  is  correctly  given.     On  all  this  question  cf.  C. 
Barbagallo,  La  catastrofe  di  Nerone,  Catania,  1915. 
VOL.  II — 15 


226  Nero 

left  his  hiding  place  which  he  had  finally  felt  to  be  un- 
safe, and,  after  an  adventurous  journey  by  night,  had 
succeeded  in  reaching  the  villa  of  a  faithful  freedman 
outside  the  Porta  Nomentana.  On  the  way  he  had 
heard  the  shouts  of  the  praetorians  acclaiming  Galba 
and  cursing  his  own  name.  In  this  house  he  had 
lived  several  days  until  the  morning  of  June  9,  68 — 
the  date  is  a  probable  but  not  absolutely  certain  con- 
jecture— and  on  the  arrival  of  the  soldiers  who  came  to 
lead  him  to  execution  he  finally  killed  himself  with  his 
freedman's  aid.     He  was  not  yet  31 ! 

The  Julio-Claudian  family  was  extinct.  The  last 
of  its  members  had  disappeared  after  making  for  ever 
infamous  the  name  of  Nero  which,  since  the  days  of 
the  second  Punic  War,  had  been  one  of  the  most 
glorious  in  Rome. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE    FIRST    GREAT    CRISIS    IN    THE    HISTORY    OF    THE 
EMPIRE 

66.     The  Reign  of  Galba  (June  9,  68- January,  69 

A.D.)  ^  The  new  emperor  intended  that  his  govern- 
ment should  be  the  very  opposite  of  Nero's,  simple, 
economical,  full  of  respect  for  tradition  and  deference 
to  the  senate  and  firm  without  being  arbitrary.  These 
were  excellent  ideals  but  hard  to  realize  in  these 
troubled  times.  Galba,  moreover,  did  not  possess  the 
qualities  necessary  for  success  in  such  a  difficult 
enterprise.  He  was  old,  rich  and  parsimonious,  severe 
and  narrow-minded,  violent  and  weak,  obstinate  and 
maladroit  as  noblemen  often  are.  He  showed  this  at 
once  by  committing  a  series  of  errors  which  caused  a 
rupture  between  him  and  those  who  had  at  first  been 
his  supporters.  On  his  journey  through  Gaul  he 
ill-treated  the  cities  which  had  opposed  Vindex,  sow- 
ing discontent  everywhere  and  offending  the  legions 
from  Germany  which  had  crushed  the  revolt  raised 
by  the  Gallic  noble.  He  added  to  this  affront  by 
depriving  them  of  their  general  Virginius  Rufus,  to 
whom  the  legions  had  in  vain  offered  the  empire,  and 

'  On  the  reign  of  Galba  c/.  C.  Barbagallo,  Un  semestre  di  impero 
repubblicano  in  Atti  delta  R.  Accademia  d' Archaologia  lettere,  etc., 
Napoli,  1913. 

227 


228  The  First  Great  Crisis 

by  substituting  for  him  another  officer  without  pre- 
stige or  authority.  Next  he  quarrelled  so  violently 
with  Nymphidius  Sabinus  that  the  offended  prefect 
tried  to  organize  a  new  conspiracy  among  the  prae- 
torians to  have  himself  elected  emperor  in  place  cf 
Galba.  The  plot  was  discovered  and  suppressed  and 
Nymphidius  and  several  officers  perished,  but  from  this 
moment  the  praetorian  guard  ceased  to  be  faithful  to 
Galba.  In  revenge  Galba  refused  to  pay  the  praetorians 
the  donation  promised  by  Nymphidius,  which  natur- 
ally aggravated  the  difficulties  of  the  situation.  Dif- 
ficulties and  discord  arose  also  with  the  senate,  and 
particularly  with  the  party  which  dreamed  of  a  com- 
plete restoration  of  the  old  republic.  Many  were 
disappointed  with  the  dictatorial  and  sometimes  posi- 
tively violent  manner  in  which  Galba  exercised  his 
supreme  authority.  Finally  he  was  much  damaged  by 
the  measures  which  he  took  to  re-establish  the  finances 
of  the  empire,  more  especially  by  the  commission  he 
appointed  to  investigate  the  expenditure  of  Nero,  and 
the  donations  he  had  made.  The  gifts  Nero  had  given 
had  been  sold,  left  as  legacies,  given  away  again, 
divided,  improved,  increased,  and  mixed  with  other 
property  so  that  it  was  now  impossible  to  go  back  on 
the  past  without  an  infinity  of  litigation,  contestations, 
and  complaints.  Moreover,  Galba  tried  to  reintroduce 
into  the  administration  of  the  empire  the  old  republi- 
can parsimony  which  Nero  had  cast  aside,  and  had 
suppressed  all  festivals  and  other  unprofitable  ex- 
penditure. It  was  a  wise  move,  but  it  alienated  from 
him  many  people,  especially  among  the  lower  classes, 
who  were  accustomed  to  live  comfortably  at  Rome  on 
the  money  scattered  by  Nero.  Thus  many  of  those 
who  under  Nero  had  cursed  the  mad  prodigality  of  the 


The  Reign  of  Galba  229 

emperor  were  now  ready  to  murmur  against  the  mean- 
ness of  Galba. 

For  all  these  reasons,  Galba 's  government  soon 
caused  much  discontent  at  Rome  which  the  friends  of 
Nero,  the  partisans  of  Nymphidius  who  had  escaped 
punishment,  and  the  disappointed  republicans  did  not 
hesitate  to  foment  as  much  as  they  could.  It  was  not 
long  before  some  began  to  lament  the  disappearance 
of  Nero.  This  opposition  would  not  however  have 
been  very  dangerous  had  there  not  been  added  to  the 
difficulties  of  the  moment  another  difficulty  which 
had  hitherto  been  evaded  or  circimi vented,  but  which 
now  for  the  first  time  appeared  in  all  its  force.  That 
difficulty  was  the  great  uncertainty  which  existed 
as  to  the  legal  principle  from  which  the  supreme 
authority  of  the  emperor  was  derived.  This  is  a 
point  of  ?uch  vital  importance  in  the  history  of  the 
empire  that  it  is  necessary  to  understand  it  thoroughly. 
Little  by  little,  under  the  pressure  of  circumstances, 
the  supreme  imperial  authority  had  arisen,  had 
become  consolidated  in  the  ancient  aristocratic 
republic  and  was  now  an  absolute  necessity  owing 
both  to  the  growth  of  the  empire  and  the  internal 
changes  which  had  taken  place  in  the  State.  The 
legal  principle  however  on  which  this  authority  was 
based  was,  as  we  have  seen,  election  by  the  senate 
and  not  hereditary  right,  which  was  an  oriental 
and  dynastic  principle  repugnant  to  Roman  ideas. 
We  have  also  seen  that  from  Augustus  to  Nero  the 
emperors  were  all  chosen  from  the  same  family,  but 
that  this  was  due  to  political  necessity  and  not  to  any 
family  right.  The  senate  had  always  asserted  its 
right  of  election  very  feebly,  either  because  the 
assembly  no  longer  possessed  its  ancient  prestige,  or 


230  The  First  Great  Crisis 

because  it  was  lacerated  by  internal  discord,  one 
party  being  too  much  interested  in  maintaining  the 
new  authority,  the  other  averse  to  it  on  principle 
and  anxious  for  its  abolition.  This  weakness  had 
given  an  opening  for  the  intervention  of  anotlicr  i:)ower, 
the  military,  in  the  choice  of  emperors.  Claudius  and 
Nero  had  been  imposed  on  the  senate  by  the  praetor- 
ians and  Galba  by  the  Spanish  legions.  It  is  easy  to 
imagine  how  these  precedents  in  troubled  times  like 
those  succeeding  the  death  of  Nero,  when  the  empire 
and  the  army  were  not  controlled  by  a  firm  hand, 
might  give  rise  to  the  assiunption  in  the  rude  minds 
of  the  soldiers  that  the  legions  had  the  right  to  elect 
the  emperor.  The  example  set  by  the  legions  of  Spain 
in  proclaiming  Galba  had  been  especially  serious.  If 
these  legions  had  elected  the  emperor  and  the  senate 
had  recognized  the  election  why  should  not  the  other 
legions  have  the  same  right  ?  The  esprit  de  corps,  the 
natural  emulation  and  the  desire  to  imitate,  which 
were  so  strong  in  all  the  armies,  were  bound,  in  the 
existing  great  uncertainty  as  to  the  legal  principle  of 
the  supreme  power  at  a  moment  of  civil  disturbance, 
to  lead  each  army  out  of  amour  propre  to  desire  to 
have  its  own  emperor. 

67.  The  Revolt  of  the  Legions  of  Germany  and  the 
Fall  of  Galba  (January  1-15,  69  A.D.).  It  was  in  fact 
the  legions  of  Germany  which  gave  the  signal.  They 
had  been  offended  by  Galba  as  we  have  said,  and  they 
nursed  their  resentment  throughout  the  year  68. 
Excited  by  the  news  from  Rome  and  by  the  lively 
discontent  throughout  Gaul,  which  was  due  to  Galba 's 
ill-treatment,  badly  led  (at  least  as  regards  the  legions 
of  Germania  Superior)  by  the  weak  general  sent  to 
them  by  Galba,  driven  by  a  kind  of  madness  which  was 


Revolt  of  the  Legions  of  Germany     231 

shortly  to  infect  almost  all  the  armies,  and  exalted  by 
every  sort  of  chimerical  hope,  the  legions  of  Germania 
Superior  and  Germania  Inferior  proclaimed  Aulus 
Vitellius,  governor  of  the  latter  province,  emperor  in 
the  early  days  of  January,  69  amid  the  greatest  popu- 
lar enthusiasm.  This  revolt  was  enough  to  bring 
about  the  collapse  of  Galba's  government  at  Rome 
within  a  very  few  days.  When  he  received  the  news 
Galba  decided  to  carry  out  a  plan  which  had  for  some 
time  been  mooted  of  strengthening  his  government 
by  choosing  a  younger  colleague  whom  he  was  to 
adopt  as  his  son.  It  appears  that  this  measure  was 
due  to  a  desire  to  make  up  for  Galba's  many  short- 
comings and  also  to  avoid  new  difficulties  about  the 
succession  at  his  death.  Effect  had  not  yet  been  given 
to  the  suggestion  because  among  Galba's  friends  and 
advisers  there  were  different  opinions  as  to  who  should 
be  chosen.  Some  wished  for  Nero's  old  friend  Otho, 
who  had  been  Poppaea's  first  husband,  while  others 
had  set  their  hearts  on  divers  other  candidates.  The 
news  from  Germany  precipitated  a  decision,  but 
Galba  did  not  choose  Otho,  perhaps  because  he  had 
been  too  much  Nero's  friend.  His  choice  fell  upon  L. 
Calpurnius  Piso  Licinianus,  a  man  who  represented 
an  entirely  opposite  tendency,  who  by  family  tradition 
and  personal  inclinations  belonged  to  the  most  con- 
servative branch  of  the  Roman  aristocracy  and  who 
was  an  enemy  of  Nero  and  one  of  the  last  living  ex- 
amples of  the  old  school  of  manners.  The  meaning 
of  this  selection  was  clear,  and  Otho  after  the  adop- 
tion of  Piso  did  not  hesitate  to  form  a  conspiracy 
among  the  praetorians  for  Galba's  overthrow.  The 
guard  were  discontented  with  the  emperor,  because  he 
had  refused  to  give  them  the  donation  promised  by 


232  The  First  Great  Crisis 

Nymphidius,  because  he  had  been  imposed  on  the 
senate  not  by  themselves  like  Claudius  and  Nero 
but  by  the  legions  of  Spain,  and  finally  because  he 
had  endeavoured  to  make  even  their  discipline  more 
rigorous.  It  was  a  troubled  time;  men's  minds  were 
in  a  state  of  agitation  and  Rome  in  chaos.  On  Janu- 
ary 15th  Galba's  reign  came  to  an  end.  A  military 
revolt  which  began  among  a  single  maniple  of  the 
guard  spread  to  the  whole  of  the  troops  stationed  in 
Rome  and  to  a  great  part  of  the  civil  population,  who 
were  angered  by  the  parsimony  of  the  new  govern- 
ment. M.  Salvius  Otho  was  proclaimed  emperor  and 
Galba  and  Piso  were  murdered. 

68.  Otho  and  Vitellius :  Italy  Invaded  by  the  Ger- 
man Legions  (January  15-April  16,  69  A.D.).  When 
Otho  returned  on  the  evening  of  that  fatal  day  from 
the  senate  which  had  unanimously  ratified  the  pro- 
clamation of  the  praetorian  guard  he  was  saluted  by  the 
cheering  crowds  that  thronged  the  streets  by  the  name 
of  Nero.  Galba's  government  had  already  caused 
many  to  forget  the  vices  and  crimes  of  his  predecessor. 
Otho  showed  no  repugnance  to  this  title.  He  caused 
Nero's  statues  to  be  set  up  again,  and  some  ancient 
historians  even  affirm  (though  it  is  not  certain)  that 
he  actually  assumed  Nero's  name  in  his  first  official 
acts.  He  did  his  best  at  any  rate  to  restore  to  Rome 
and  to  the  empire,  weary  of  Galba's  harsh  and  avari- 
cious reign,  the  easy-going  and  generous  type  of 
government  at  which  Nero  had  aimed,  but  accom- 
panied by  greater  moderation,  coherence,  and  good 
sense.  It  cannot  be  said  that,  on  the  whole,  Otho 
governed  badly.  He  granted  an  amnesty  to  all  those 
who  had  been  accused  under  his  two  predecessors. 
He  treated  the  praetorians  with  generosity  and  tact. 


Otho  and   Vitellius:  Italy  Invaded     233 

allowing  them  to  elect  their  own  prefects.  He  did 
his  best  to  conciliate  and  reassure  the  senate.  He 
resumed  the  great  building  operations  in  Rome  com- 
menced by  Nero,  and  tried  to  avoid  violence,  confisca- 
tion, and  repression.  Otho,  in  short,  became  popular 
in  Rome  and  his  government  seemed  also  to  be  con- 
solidating itself  in  the  provinces.  Chiefly  because  his 
election  had  been  ratified  by  the  senate  he  was 
recognized  by  the  legions  of  Syria  and  Judaea,  by  those 
of  Dalmatia,  Moesia,  and  Pannonia,  by  Egypt,  by  all 
the  oriental  provinces,  and  by  all  Africa.  Gaul  and 
Spain,  on  the  other  hand,  after  some  hesitation,  and 
owing  to  the  powerful  attractive  force  of  the  legions 
of  Germany,  declared  for  Vitellius.  The  legions  of 
Britain  seem  to  have  remained  outside  the  conflict. 
On  the  total  reckoning  Otho  had  on  his  side  a  part, 
though  the  smaller  part,  of  the  western  provinces, 
Italy,  all  the  East,  and  all  Africa:  enough  perhaps  to 
bring  the  rebellious  legions  in  the  West  to  their  senses. 
Nevertheless,  Otho  wrote  privately  and  repeatedly 
to  Vitellius  urging  him  to  spare  the  State  the  scourge 
of  a  new  civil  war  and  assuring  him  a  prospect  of  power 
and  riches  and  a  most  splendid  and  pleasant  retire- 
ment. Undismayed  by  initial  rebuffs  he  continued 
the  negotiations.  He  pledged  the  credit  of  the  senate 
itself  and  endeavoured  to  resume  directly  with  the 
armies  of  the  Rhine  the  pourparlers  for  an  honourable 
compromise,  to  which  their  leader  had  refused  to 
listen.  Otho,  in  short,  wished  to  avoid  war  and,  if 
war  proved  inevitable,  not  to  appear  responsible  for  it, 
for  all  Italy  was  terrified,  and  not  without  reason,  by 
the  storm  which  lowered  on  .the  horizon.  Italy  had 
enjoyed  precisely  a  century  of  peace  and  quietness, 
tranquilly   cultivating   her   fields    and    adorning   her 


234  ^^^  First  Great  Crisis 

cities.  She  had  forgotten  what  war,  and  especially 
civil  war,  was  like,  and,  lo,  all  of  a  sudden  it  was  again 
suggested  that  a  torrent  of  armed  men  would  descend 
upon  the  face  of  the  country  destroying  everything 
in  its  course. 

All  Otho's  endeavours,  however,  were  in  vain. 
Vitellius  was  now  the  prisoner  of  his  own  legions. 
Exalted  by  a  mistaken  sense  of  honour,  by  mad  hopes 
of  recompense  and  boot}^  and  b}^  a  kind  of  delirium 
which  had  taken  possession  of  them,  they  would  hear 
of  nothing  but  invading  Italy  at  any  cost,  and  impos- 
ing their  own  emperor  on  the  world.  They  would  have 
murdered  Vitellius  if  he  had  insisted  on  making  peace. 
The  only  result  of  the  parleying  which  had  taken 
place  was  to  impel  Vitellius  and  his  generals  to  take 
the  offensive  before  Otho  could  send  for  the  legions  of 
the  Danube.  Profiting  by  the  hesitation  and  delays 
of  their  adversary,  they  occupied  during  the  winter 
the  Alpine  passes  which  Otho  had  left  unguarded,  and 
thence  they  invaded  Italy  with  two  armies.  The  first 
of  these,  under  Fabius  Valens,  having  crossed  Gaul 
was  to  enter  Gallia  Narbonensis  and  from  there  by 
way  of  the  country  of  the  Allobroges  and  the  Vocontii 
was  to  debouch  on  the  plain  of  the  Po  through  the 
Cottian  Alps.  The  other,  commanded  by  Alienus 
Caecina,  was  to  invade  Italy  through  the  country  of 
the  Helvetii  and  the  Pennine  Alps.  The  two  forces 
were  to  effect  a  junction  in  the  valley  of  the  Po.  The 
revolt  in  favour  of  Vitellius  of  a  body  of  cavalry 
stationed  in  that  valley  precipitated  the  execution  of 
this  plan.  Caecina,  who  had  reached  the  territory  of 
the  Helvetii,  hastened  ta  cross  the  Alps  in  midwinter 
with  his  army  and,  probably  as  early  as  February,  the 
valley  of  the  Po  was  in  the  hands  of  Vitellius. 


Otho  and   Vitellius:  Italy  Invaded      235 

Otho  was  now  also  forced  to  take  arms.  After  the 
loss  of  part  of  the  valley  of  the  Po  he  sent  the  fleet  to 
disembark  troops  in  Gallia  Narbonensis  to  threaten 
the  flank  of  the  army  of  Valens  and  to  try  to  prevent 
its  arrival  in  Italy.  While  he  awaited  the  coming  of 
the  Danubian  legions  he  collected  and  armed  other 
forces,  and,  on  March  14th,  he  left  Rome  with  all 
the  troops  for  the  moment  at  his  disposal  and  with 
most  of  the  magistrates  and  ex-magistrates  and  some 
of  the  equestrian  order. 

It  had  been  decided  that,  pending  the  arrival  of  the 
legions  from  the  Danube,  the  line  of  the  Po  was  to  be 
defended.  An  attack  by  Caecina  on  Placentia  (Pia- 
cenza)  was  in  fact  vigorously  repulsed  by  Otho's 
generals.  Unfortunately,  however,  the  force  Otho 
had  sent  to  Gallia  Narbonensis  to  detain  the  army  of 
Valens  beyond  the  Alps  had  not  succeeded  in  its  task. 
Valens  had  crossed  the  Alps  and  was  on  the  point  of 
joining  Caecina  in  the  valley  of  the  Po.  On  this 
Suetonius  Paulinus,  the  father  of  the  historian  and 
Otho's  best  general,  had  abandoned  the  defensive 
south  of  the  river,  and  had  crossed  to  the  northern 
bank  in  order  to  seek  battle  with  the  enemy  before 
Valens  should  arrive.  Not  far  from  Cremona,  at  a 
place  called  Locus  Castrorum,  he  succeeded  in  inflict- 
ing a  serious  defeat  on  Caecina  but  not  in  enveloping 
and  destroying  him.  Thus,  although  he  was  defeated, 
Caecina  contrived  to  escape  and  join  Valens  who  had 
already  reached  Ticinum  (Pavia).  Otho  then  called 
a  council  of  war  at  which  Suetonius  expressed  the 
view  that,  as  it  had  been  impossible  to  prevent  the 
junction  of  Aulus  and  Caecina  they  should  postpone 
giving  battle  until  the  arrival  of  the  legions  of  the 
Danube.     Another  plan,  however,  was  adopted  con- 


236  The  First  Great  Crisis 

cerning  which  the  details  given  by  ancient  writers  are 
very  obscure.  It  appears  that  Otho  meant,  by  a  flank 
march  to  north  of  Cremona,  to  transfer  to  a  point 
west  of  that  town  at  the  confluence  of  the  Adda  and 
the  Po,  the  forces  which  he  had  at  Bedriacum  east  of 
Cremona,  so  as  to  cut  the  communications  between 
Vitellius  who  was  crossing  the  Alps  and  his  army  at 
Cremona.  Otho  was  himself  to  remain  at  Brixellum 
(Brescello)  and  wait  for  the  army  which  was  coming 
from  Aquileia.  With  this  army  and  that  which  had 
passed  west  of  Cremona  he  was  to  encircle  the  enemy 
and  compel  him  to  surrender  before  the  Vitellians 
could  arrive.  If  this  was  Otho's  plan,  its  success  de- 
pended on  his  flanking  force  reaching  its  objective. 
But,  whether  because  the  enemy  were  informed  of  his 
design  or  because  his  generals,  several  of  whom  were 
opposed  to  the  plan,  did  not  properly  execute  the 
emperor's  orders,  the  Vitellians  succeeded  in  barring 
the  way  and  attacked  Otho's  army  on  the  march  out- 
side Cremona.  A  battle  followed — known  as  the 
battle  of  Bedriacum — which  resulted  unfavourably  for 
Otho's  army.  The  defeat  however  was  in  no  way 
decisive,  and  Otho  would  easily  have  recovered 
himself  if  he  had  but  awaited  the  arrival  of  the  great 
forces  which  were  on  the  point  of  joining  him.  On  the 
news  of  the  reverse,  however,  the  emperor  committed 
suicide,  not  so  much,  we  may  legitimately  conjecture, 
because  he  had  lost  a  battle  as  because  of  his  despair 
at  the  stupendous  disorder  into  which  the  empire  had 
fallen.  Otho  was  a  refined  and  intelligent  person  and, 
in  spite  of  his  defects,  no  ordinary  man.  He  must  have 
seen  that  Nero's  government  of  which  he  had  been  a 
supporter  had  brought  the  empire  into. a  situation  so 
critical  that  he  did  not  feel  he  had  strength  to  ex- 


Vespasian  and  Revolt  of  Eastern  Legions  237 

tricate  it.    He  had  in  fact  collapsed  under  the  burden 
of  his  position.' 

69.  Vespasian  and  the  Revolt  of  the  Eastern 
Legions  (July,  69).  After  Otho's  death  Vitellius,  who 
had  not  yet  crossed  the  Alps,  remained  master  of  Italy. 
Otho's  soldiers  still  attempted  to  resist  and  offered 
the  empire  to  Virginius  Rufus  who  refused  it.  Finally, 
however,  as  they  had  no  head  and  were  assured  of 
pardon,  they  resigned  themselves  to  acknowledging 
the  victory  of  the  German  legions  and  swore  fidelity 
to  the  victor.  The  senate,  having  returned  hastily  to 
Rome,  ratified  the  proclamation  of  Vitellius  as  em- 
peror, and  the  images  of  Galba,  crowned  with  latirel 
and  with  flowers,  were  carried  round  the  city.  Thus 
Italy  in  her  anguish  turned  once  more  on  her  bed  of 
thorns,  and,  after  having  identified  the  government 
of  Nero  with  the  clement  and  sagacious  rule  of  Otho, 
now  tried  to  regard  the  government  of  Vitellius  who 
had  meanwhile  arrived  in  Italy  with  the  third  army 
which,  like  the  other  two,  was  in  great  part  composed 
of  Gallic  and  German  mercenaries,  as  a  continuation 
of  the  regime  of  Galba.     Italy  was  now  for  the  first 

•  On  this  war  and  on  the  wars  between  the  Flavians  and  the 
Vitellians  cf.  B.  W.  Henderson,  Civil  War  and  Rebellion  in  the 
Roman  Empire,  A.D.  6g-yo,  London,  1908.  The  explanation  we 
have  given  of  Otho's  plan  of  campaign  is  that  which  Mr.  Hen- 
derson has  worked  out  in  this  book  with  much  ingenious  argument. 
It  is  still  somewhat  obscure  and  open  to  objections,  but  it  remains 
the  most  satisfactory  explanation  for  any  one  who  is  not  content 
with  the  incomprehensible  account  of  Tacitus.  Mr.  Henderson's 
conjecture  depends  on  two  main  arguments:  (i)  the  fact  that 
Tacitus  {Hist.,  ii.,  40)  explicitly  says  that  Otho's  army  was 
directed  ad  conflnentes  Padi  et  Adduce  fluminum;  (2)  that  it  is 
necessary  to  find  some  military  reason  for  the  emperor's  presence 
at  Brixellum  instead  of  the  romantic  one  which  satisfied  Tacitus. 


238  The  First  Great  Crisis 

time  to  learn  what  it  meant  to  possess  an  army  of 
which  the  components,  whether  legionaries  or  auxil- 
iaries, were  to  such  a  great  extent  non-Italian.  On  its 
way  across  Italy  towards  Rome  the  army  pillaged  the 
country  and  was  swollen  as  it  went  by  a  nameless 
crowd  of  new-found  friends,  followers,  and  admirers; 
senators,  knights,  idle  plebians,  parasites,  athletes, 
strolling  players,  charioteers,  gladiators — in  a  word, 
all  the  rabble  of  which  in  Nero's  time  the  city  and  the 
court  were  full,  and  which  now  crowded  about  the 
chariot  wheels  of  the  conqueror  in  order  to  pick  up 
fragments  of  the  spoil  amid  the  general  confusion. 

Vitellius,  like  many  other  emperors,  was  better 
than  his  reputation.  When  he  arrived  at  Rome  in 
July  he  did  his  best  to  reduce  the  terrible  confusion 
of  public  affairs  to  some  kind  of  order.  In  choosing 
his  ministers  he  replaced  freedmen  by  knights  whom 
moreover  he  forbade  (as  a  class)  to  appear  as  per- 
formers in  the  theatre  or  the  circus.  In  the  senate  he 
made  a  point  of  being  treated  merely  as  an  ordinary 
senator.  He  disbanded  the  old  corps  of  praetorians. 
He  was  anxious  to  send  the  legions  back  to  their 
provinces  and  tried  to  mitigate  the  bitter  rivalry 
which  separated  the  Othonian  and  the  Vitellian  troops. 
At  the  same  time  he  caused  the  statues  of  Nero  to  be 
raised  again  in  order  to  please  the  multitude,  another 
proof  of  the  persistent  popularity  of  the  last  of  the 
Claudii  among  certain  classes  in  the  community.  He 
did  not  however,  entirely  devote  himself,  as  was 
afterwards  alleged,  to  the  giving  of  sumptuous  feasts, 
but  tried  his  best  to  restore  some  measure  of  peace  to 
the  weary  empire.  It  was  hoped  indeed  for  a  moment 
that  the  tempest  was  over,  but  suddenly  it  recom- 
menced more  violently  than  ever.     After  the  West 


Vespasian  and  Revolt  of  Eastern  Legions  239 

the  East  was  now  in  motion,  and  the  legions  of  Jud^a, 
Syria,  and  Egypt  took  the  field. 

We  left  Vespian  in  the  spring  of  68  on  the  point  of 
commencing  the  siege  of  Jerusalem.  The  disastrous 
end  of  Nero  shortly  afterwards  checked  his  activities. 
It  appears  that,  not  wishing  to  commit  his  army  to 
such  a  serious  enterprise  while  things  were  so  uncer- 
tain, he  contented  himself  with  holding  the  most 
important  positions  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  city, 
suspending  meanwhile  the  active  prosecution  of  the 
siege.  His  legions,  therefore,  were  permitted  to  enjoy 
some  degree  of  rest  while  the  whole  empire  was  in 
flames.  At  first  they  did  not  abuse  this  privilege. 
Partly  owing  to  their  greater  distance  from  Italy  and 
partly  because  among  them  the  non-Italian  element 
was  represented  by  orientals,  the  legions  of  Judaea, 
like  those  of  Syria  and  Egypt,  were  at  first  content  to 
remain  inactive  spectators  of  the  conflicts  which  were 
developing  in  the  West.  But,  as  time  went  on  and  the 
struggle  became  more  complicated,  they  too  began  to 
be  invaded  by  the  madness  which  had  infected  all  the 
other  legions.  Why  should  the  legions  of  Germany 
impose  an  emperor  on  the  senate  and  enjoy  all  the 
advantages  of  such  a  power,  any  more  than  the  legions 
of  the  East?  Were  they  of  less  account  than  the 
others?  The  oriental  provinces,  it  must  further  be 
remembered,  and  therefore  the  legions  stationed  there, 
had,  for  obvious  reasons,  been  much  more  favourable 
to  Nero  than  Italy  and  the  West.  This  explains  their 
prompt  recognition  of  Otho.  But  now  Otho  was  gone 
and  the  legions  which  for  two  years  had  been  fighting 
the  most  obstinate  enemy  of  the  empire  were  invited 
to  accept  the  caprice  of  the  soldiers  of  Germany  or  of 
the  un warlike  Roman  senators  who  had  overthrown 


240  The  First  Great  Crisis 

Nero's  lawful  rule!  With  these  sentiments  were 
mingled  apprehensions  of  a  more  practical  sort.  How 
would  the  new  princeps  treat  those,  whether  soldiers 
or  generals,  who  in  the  civil  war  which  was  so  recent 
had  declared  for  his  rival?  Thus,  from  the  earliest 
days  of  the  reign  of  Vitellius  there  had  been  negotia- 
tions between  the  East  and  the  West,  between  the 
legions  of  the  Danube  which  had  not  had  the  oppor- 
tunity of  fighting  against  Vitellius,  and  the  legions  of 
Syria,  Judaea,  and  Egypt,  with  the  object  of  finding  a 
new  emperor  who  could  be  set  up  against  the  emperor 
of  the  German  legions.  Their  first  choice  was  Muci- 
anus,  the  governor  of  Syria,  a  man  of  much  merit  and 
of  the  most  illustrious  descent,  but  as  he  refused, 
Vespasian  was  finally  selected.  Vespasian  lacked  both 
high  birth  and  ambition,  but  the  times  were  critical 
and  his  army,  his  son  Titus  who  was  both  bold  and 
intelligent,  and  Mucianus  himself  who  had  previously 
been  far  from  friendly,  all  insisted.  On  July  ist, 
in  the  year  69,  therefore,  the  praefect  of  Egypt  pro- 
claimed T.  Flavius  Vespasianus  emperor  at  Alexan- 
dria. Some  days  later  the  armies  of  Syria  and  Judaea 
swore  fidelity  on  the  images  of  the  new  prince,  and  a 
little  later  the  legions  of  Moesia,  Pannonia,  and  Dal- 
matia,  which  had  had  no  opportunity  of  fighting 
either  for  Nero  or  for  Otho,  also  swore  allegiance  to 
Vespasian.  The  oriental  princes  of  Sophene,  Com- 
magene,  and  the  independent  part  of  Judaea  also 
declared  themselves  adherents  of  the  new  candidate. 
Even  the  King  of  Parthia  undertook  not  to  molest  the 
empire  during  the  war  which  would  be  necessary  in 
order  to  establish  the  new  emperor. 

70.     The  New  Civil  War  and  the  Victory  of  Vespa- 
sian (July-December,  69  A.D.).     Titus  was  to  carry 


New  Civil  War  a?td  Vespasian  s   Victory  241 

the  siege  of  Jerusalem  to  a  conclusion  while  Ves- 
pasian was  to  go  to  Egypt  to  take  secure  possession 
of  the  granary  of  the  empire,  so  as  to  be  able  to  starve 
Rome  out  if  necessary.  Mucianus  was  to  take  part 
of  the  army  and  assume  command  of  the  legions  of 
Pannonia,  Moesia,  and  Dalmatia  with  which  he  was  to 
invade  Italy.  Such  was  the  plan  which  Vespasian 
and  his  generals  concerted  at  Berytus  in  Syria.  It 
was  a  vast,  but  at  the  same  time,  a  skilful  and  prudent 
combination,  which  aimed  at  securing  its  object  slowly 
but  surely.  The  impatience  of  the  Pannonian  legions 
substituted  for  it  without  the  knowledge  of  their 
leaders  another  plan  which  was  more  summary  as 
well  as  more  dangerous.  The  commanding  officers  of 
the  legions  stationed  in  Pannonia  partly  because 
recent  news  from  Italy  showed  that  an  immediate 
attack  would  take  the  Vitellians  unprepared,  and 
partly  because  they  wished  to  be  the  first  to  divide 
the  honour  and  the  spoil  of  the  undertaking,  met  in 
council  at  Petovio  (Pettau)  on  the  Drave  in  upper 
Pannonia,  and,  on  the  proposal  of  Antonius  Primus, 
decided  to  invade  Italy  at  once  without  waiting  for 
Mucianus.  Antonius  Primus,  who  in  the  time  of 
Nero  had  been  expelled  from  the  senate  to  which  he 
was  re-admitted  under  Galba,  was  undoubtedly  a  bold 
and  valiant  soldier  as  was  shown  by  this  audacious 
initiative  on  his  part.  The  Vitellian  army  was  really 
in  a  condition,  no  doubt  transitory,  of  disorganiza- 
tion and  reorganization.  The  general  to  whom  had 
been  entrusted  the  defence  of  eastern  Italy  was 
Alienus  Caecina  who  had  had  but  little  success  in  the 
preceding  campaign.  Operating  with  a  slackness 
(which  might  easily  be  mistaken  for  treacher}')  in 
spite  of  his  superiority  of  nimibers  he  allowed  An- 

VOL.     11 16 


242  The  First  Great  Crisis 

tonius  Primus  to  reach  the  line  of  the  Adige  with 
considerable  forces.  There,  hearing  that  the  fleet  at 
Ravenna  had  gone  over  to  the  enemy,  he  made  up  his 
mind  that  further  resistance  was  useless  and  proposed 
to  his  soldiers  that  they  should  desert  also.  Indignant 
at  such  treason  the  legions  put  their  general  to  the 
sword,  decided  not  to  yield  and  retreated  on  Cremona 
with  a  view  of  joining  their  comrades  there  and  re- 
sisting to  the  last.  Antonius  Primus  however,  with 
lightning  rapidity,  followed  them  towards  Cremona. 
Between  Redriaco  and  Cremona  and  almost  under 
'the  wall  of  the  latter  town  was  fought  an  exceedingly 
violent  action  which  lasted  a  day  and  a  night  and 
ended  in  the  complete  defeat  of  the  Vitellians.  The 
best  army  which  Vitellius  had  in  Italy  was  thus  prac- 
tically destroyed  and,  on  hearing  of  this  defeat  and  of 
the  treachery  of  the  fleet,  Fabius  Valens,  the  other 
Vitellian  general,  fled  to  Gaul  where  the  Narbonese 
province  had  also  declared  for  Vespasian.  Shortlj'' 
afterwards,  when  all  the  Alpine  passes  had  been  barred 
by  Antonius  Primus  against  the  threat  of  reinforce- 
ments which  might  have  come  from  Germany,  the 
fleet  at  Misenum  also  joined  the  rebels.  Mucianus  in 
his  turn  arrived  in  Italy  with  the  legions  he  had 
brought  from  the  East,  and  his  army,  like  that  of 
Antonius  Primus,  was  advancing  through  central 
Italy  on  Latium. 

On  this  the  Flavian  party  at  Rome  which  consisted 
of  the  old  Neronian  and  Othonian  party  together  with 
Vespasian's  few  personal  friends,  led  by  T.  Flavius 
Sabinus  the  praefect  of  the  city  who  had  been  appointed 
by  Nero  and  reinstated  by  Otho  in  that  office,  per- 
suaded Vitellius  to  yield  and  to  abdicate,  thus  mak- 
ing the  renunciation  which  he  had  refused  to  make 


New  Civil   War  and   Vespasian  s   Victory  243 

in  January,  69.  Now,  however,  as  before,  Vitellius 
was  not  master  of  his  destiny.  He  belonged  to  the 
legionaries  of  Germany  from  whom  he  had  selected 
the  new  praetorian  cohorts,  to  the  maddened  soldiers 
who  had  rushed  back  to  Rome  from  the  line  of  the 
Po,  to  his  own  friends  and  even  to  the  rabble  of  the 
city  desperate  after  a  year  and  a  half  of  civil  war. 
This  time,  as  before,  he  was  compelled  to  resist.  And 
the  resistance  on  the  part  of  his  friends  and  supporters 
was  obstinate  and  ferocious.  The  city  had  to  be 
taken  by  storm  and  conquered,  quarter  by  quarter, 
house  by  house,  garden  by  garden,  by  the  rebel  army 
converging  from  three  different  directions.  The 
Capitol  was  burned.  Sabinus  was  slain  and  Ves- 
pasian's younger  son,  the  future  emperor  Domitian, 
escaped  as  if  by  a  miracle  from  the  fire  and  the  carnage. 
Finally,  however,  on  the  evening  of  December  21st, 
after  long  and  ignominious  tortures,  Vitellius  himself 
was  thrown  into  the  Tiber. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE    FLAVIANS    (69-96  A.D.) 

71.  The  End  of  the  Crisis.  As  soon  as  Rome  had 
fallen  into  the  hands  of  Vespasian's  generals  the  senate 
hastened  to  recognize  the  victor.  We  possess  part  of 
the  text  of  the  law  by  which  the  comitia  ratified  the 
senatus  consultum  which  conferred  the  empire  on 
Vespasian.'  In  this  law  are  enumerated  the  powers 
which,  having  first  been  conferred  on  one  or  other  of 
his  predecessors,  were  now  handed  over  to  him.  We 
do  not  know  with  certainty  whether  a  similar  lex  de 
imperio  had  been  passed  in  previous  cases.  Perhaps 
however  it  is  not  an  accident  that  the  fragment  of  this 
law  which  has  been  handed  down  to  us  engraved  on  a 
bronze  tablet,  should  relate  to  Vespasian.  It  is  clear 
that  in  engraving  this  enactment  on  bronze — and  not 
merely  in  Rome — it  was  intended  to  publish  as  widely 
as  possible  the  legal  credentials  of  the  new  emperor's 
authority.  Vespasian  was  the  first  emperor  not  be- 
longing to  the  family  of  Augustus  who  really  ruled. 
His  name,  therefore,  was  not  enough,  as  in  the  case  of 
Claudius  and  Nero,  to  serve  as  a  subsidiary  title  for 
his  authority  side  by  side  with  his  more  or  less  free 
election   by  the  senate.     And,  as  the   terrible   crisis 

'  The  lex  de  impeno,  or  rather  the  fragment  of  it  which  has 
been  preserved*  is  to  be  found  in  C.  I.  L.,  vi.,  930. 

244 


The  End  of  the  Crisis  245 

through  which  the  State  was  passing  sprang  from  the 
wavering  uncertainty  of  the  legal  principle  on  which 
the  supreme  power  was  based,  it  is  easy  to  see  why  it 
was  desired  to  emphasize,  by  engraving  it  on  bronze, 
the  most  important  title  to  the  empire  possessed  by 
the  man  who  had  hitherto  been  no  more  than  an  or- 
dinary and  very  obscure  senator,  namely,  the  will  of 
the  people  and  of  the  senate  who  had  elected  him. 

There  was,  moreover,  no  time  to  be  lost.  The  crisis 
was  anything  but  over.  The  new  emperor  was  in 
Egypt  and  his  friends  in  Italy  were  confronted  by  diffi- 
culties of  every  kind.  The  surviving  forces  of  the 
Vitellians  gave,  it  is  true,  less  cause  for  anxiety  than 
the  remnants  of  Otho's  army  had  lately  given  to  the 
Vitellians,  but  they  were  not  altogether  to  be  despised. 
Mucianus  was  compelled  to  postpone  the  reorganiza- 
tion of  the  army  until  the  arrival  of  the  new  princeps 
and  had  to  content  himself  with  temporary  expedients. 
On  the  other  hand  he  had  to  take  immediate  measures 
in  Gaul,  where  an  insurrection  commenced  among 
the  Batavi,  a  Germanic  tribe,  who  lived  near  the 
mouth  of  the  Rhine,  with  a  view  to  helping  Vespasian 
against  Vitellius,  had  gradually  spread  to  other  tribes 
in  the  neighbourhood,  involving  all  the  fighting  auxil- 
iaries of  the  legions  stationed  on  the  Rhine,  and  several 
Gallic  populations,  such  as  the  Treviri  and  the  Lin- 
gones,  hitherto  most  faithful  to  Rome.  The  move- 
ment was  led  by  four  men  of  great  capacity  and  valour, 
the  Batavian  Julius  Civilis,  Julius  Classicus,  and  Julius 
Tutor  of  the  Treviri,  and  Julius  Sabinus  of  the  Lin- 
gonej.  Under  their  influence  the  revolt  against  Vitel- 
lius had  been  converted  into  a  national  movement 
tending  to  separate  Celtic,  and  Celto-Germanic  Gaul 
from  the  Roman  Empire.     Assisted  by  the  remnants  of 


24<J  The  Flavians 

the  Vitellian  forces  on  the  Rhine,  the  insurrection  had 
made  such  progress  that  Mucianus  had  to  send  a  con- 
siderable force  against  the  rebels,  amounting  to  seven 
legions  under  Q.  Petitius  Cerialis.  Gaul  was  easily 
reduced  to  submission  but  the  war  with  the  Batavians 
was  much  more  difficult  and  was  only  ended,  partly 
by  force  of  arms  and  partly  by  diplomatic  negotia- 
tion, in  the  autumn  of  70.  At  the  same  time  there 
were  raids  by  Sarmatians  and  Dacians  into  Moesia 
which  was  empty  of  troops.  Troubles  and  forays 
distracted  Africa,  and  the  Jews  within  the  walls  of 
besieged  Jerusalem  were  offering  a  desperate  resist- 
ance to  Titus  the  emperor's  son.  It  was  not  until 
August  29th  of  this  year  that  the  temple  was  burnt 
out,  and  not  until  a  month  later  that  the  upper  city 
shared  the  same  fate.  The  figures  given  by  the 
ancients  of  the  losses  sustained  by  the  Jews  are  cer- 
tainly exaggerated,  but  the  carnage  must  have  been 
terrible.  The  slaughter,  such  as  it  was,  was  not 
enough  to  tranquillize  the  country,  for  sporadic 
groups  of  desperate  men  resisted  for  more  than  a 
year  longer. 

The  terrible  crisis  in  the  history  of  the  empire  caused 
by  the  fall  of  the  Julio-Claudian  house  and  the  uncer- 
tainty of  the  legal  principle  of  the  transmission  of  the 
supreme  authority  was  not  really  terminated  until  72, 
when  the  revolt  in  Gaul,  the  revolt  in  Judaea,  and  the 
minor  troubles  of  the  empire  were  definitely  disposed 
of,  and  when  it  was  made  clear  to  all  that  Vespasian, 
who  had  come  to  Italy  in  70,  could  exercise  seriously 
and  in  its  entirety  a  universally  recognized  authority, 
and,  in  a  word,  that  the  empire  really  had  a  princeps 
again.  All  now  depended  on  how  the  new  ruler  would 
govern. 


The  Government  of  Vespasian  and  Titus  247 

72.  The  Government  of  Vespasian  and  Titus.  Ves- 
pasian, as  we  have  seen,  was  the  grandson  of  a 
centurion,  and  the  son  of  a  publican.  He  and  his 
brother  had  been  the  first  of  their  family  to  enter  the 
senate  and  to  reach  high  office  and  high  military  rank. 
He  was  therefore  a  homo  novus  like  Cicero.  This  was 
a  serious  source  of  weakness  in  dealing  with  the  his- 
toric Roman  aristocracy  who  were  so  proud  of  their 
ancestors.  But  Vespasian  was  an  intelligent,  sen- 
sible, and  well-balanced  person  who  had  been  tempered 
to  the  difficult  duties  of  command  by  a  long  apprentice- 
ship of  obedience  in  minor  offices.  With  the  aid  of 
these  qualities  improved  by  time  he  discharged  his 
difficult  mission  with  striking  success.  One  of  the 
first  things  he  did  was  to  imitate  Augustus  by  making 
his  son  Titus  his  colleague  in  the  empire.  On  July  i , 
71,  the  conqueror  of  Judaea  received  the  tribunician 
power  and  the  consulship  which  from  this  year  were 
periodically  renewed  to  him  and  to  Vespasian.  Titus, 
therefore,  from  this  date  onwards  found  himself  in 
the  same  relation  to  Vespasian  as  Tiberius  had  been  to 
Augustus  in  the  last  ten  years  of  his  reign.  Thus 
what  is  usually  called  the  government  of  Vespasian 
should  more  properly  be  termed  the  government  of 
Vespasian  and  Titus,  so  impossible  is  it  to  distinguish 
in  the  complex  achievement  of  Vespasian  which  is  the 
father's  share  and  which  the  son's. 

The  objects  and  the  advantages  of  this  appointment, 
which  the  services  ^-endered  by  Titus  in  Judaea  amply 
justified,  were  several.  First  and  foremost  Titus,  be- 
ing a  young  man,  after  being  his  father's  colleague 
would  in  the  natural  course  of  events  become  his  suc- 
cessor, as  Tiberius  had  been  the  successor  of  Augustus. 
Vespasian  might  therefore  hope  that  the  appointment 


248  The  Flavians 

of  Titus  would  eliminate  from  the  selection  of  his  suc- 
cessor the  uncertainty  which  had  been  so  disastrous  at 
the  time  of  the  death  of  Nero,  and  also  that  he  would 
thus  be  enabled  to  leave  the  succession  to  his  son 
without  introducing  the  oriental  and  dynastic  prin- 
ciple of  hereditary  right  into  the  constitution.  More- 
over, Vespasian,  who  was  old,  in  this  way  secured  a 
young  and  energetic  collaborator  in  the  work  which 
awaited  him,  a  vast  and  difficult  work  which  had  three 
main  objects:  the  reorganization  of  the  army,  the 
readjustment  of  the  finances,  and  the  renovation  of  the 
senate. 

73.  The  Military  Reforms  of  Vespasian  and  Titus. 
As  regards  the  army  Vespasian  fixed  the  number  of  the 
legions  at  29  or  30;  the  exact  figure  is  uncertain. 
Many  veterans  were  discharged  and  provided  with 
lands.  Certain  legions  which,  like  the  8th  and  the 
1 6th  German  legions,  had  been  too  seriously  compro- 
mised in  the  revolt  in  the  provinces,  were  disbanded 
and  replaced  by  others  newly  formed.  The  civil  war 
had  shown  the  danger  of  having  legions  containing  too 
large  a  proportion  of  provincials  who  had  been  made 
Roman  citizens,  and  the  still  more  serious  danger  of 
having  ntunerous  auxiliary  bodies  all  drawn  from  the 
subject  peoples.  But  this  was  an  evil  which  Vespasian 
could  not  remedy,  for  Italy  in  her  progress  towards 
riches  and  civilization  could  not  furnish  a  sufficient 
number  of  soldiers.  Now  even  the  sons  of  small  pro- 
prietors were  unwilling  to  enlist  unless  they  were  made 
centurions.  Italy  in  a  word  was  more  and  more 
restricting  herself  to  furnishing  the  armies  with  their 
complements  of  officers.'     Italy  alone,  on  the  other 

'  On  the  military  reforms  of  Vespasian  cf.  Pfitzner,  Die  romische 
Kaiser legionen,  Leipzig,  1881,  pp.  68-73. 


The  Rearrangement  of  the  Finances    249 

hand,  furnished  the  imperial  guard  whose  political 
importance  had  so  much  increased  that  Vespasian  en- 
trusted its  command  to  his  own  son.  In  this  way  the 
danger  of  a  new  Sejanus  or  a  new  Nymphidius  Sabinus 
was  obviated,  but  the  concentration  of  power  in  the 
hands  of  a  single  family  acquired  a  dynastic  character.  ^ 

74.  The  Rearrangement  of  the  Finances.  Far 
more  imporant,  however,  were  the  financial  reforms. 
In  the  history  of  Roman  finance  Vespasian  is  of  capital 
importance  because  he  was  the  first  who  ventured  to 
increase  and  multiply  taxes  of  all  kinds  throughout  the 
empire.  Since  the  time  of  Augustus  one  of  the  funda- 
mental principles  of  Roman  finance  had  been  to  inter- 
fere as  little  as  possible  with  the  existing  system  of 
taxation,  alike  in  Italy  and  in  the  provinces,  to  avoid 
increasing  imposts  as  far  as  possible,  and,  whenever 
it  could  be  done,  to  reduce  them.  This  prudent  and 
conservative  financial  policy  had  been  one  of  the  rea- 
sons for  the  continual  embarrassments  in  which  the 
imperial  government  had  found  itself,  embarrassments 
which  each  emperor  had  tried  to  meet  by  expedients — 
some  good  and  avowed,  others  bad  and  unavowable. 
Under  Nero,  for  example,  one  reason  for  the  many 
unjust  prosecutions  of  rich  men  involving  the  confisca- 
tion of  their  property  was  the  fact  that  the  imposts  did 
not  bring  in  enough  to  carry  on  the  administration  of 
the  empire  in  accordance  with  its  growing  necessities. 
Thus  the  finances  were  constantly  in  disorder  and  the 
public  services  neglected.  The  civil  war  had  made 
matters  worse;  so  much  so  that  Vespasian  on  his  ac- 
cession to  power,  after  a  rapid  examination  of  the 
situation  had  declared  that  the  empire  required  at 
least  four  milliards  of  sesterces  if  it  was  to  be  put  de- 

•  Cf.  Suet.,  Vesp.,  25. 


250  The  Flavians 

finitely  on  a  proper  footing.'  Not  wishing  to  raise 
this  money  by  spoliation  and  violence,  he  reduced  to 
the  position  of  a  province  many  countries  which  the 
generosity  of  his  predecessors  had  left  at  liberty,  as 
well  as  several  small  States  hitherto  autonomous, 
though  in  a  state  of  perpetual  vassalage  to  Rome. 
Such  were  Achsa  which  Nero  had  liberated,  Lycia, 
Rhodes,  Byzantium,  the  kingdom  of  Commagene,  and 
such  parts  of  Thrace  and  Cilicia  as  still  remained  in- 
dependent (73).  He  set  up  a  rigorous  and  universal 
survey  of  the  empire  which  enabled  him  to  discover 
numerous  places  and  persons  who  had  in  one  way  or 
another  escaped  paying  tribute  or  had  never  been  sub- 
jected to  it.  It  seems  that  he  also  contrived  to  secure 
for  the  State  a  share  in  the  improper  but  now,  owing  to 
long  prescription,  inevitable  gains  which  many  magis- 
trates made  out  of  their  public  functions.  Finally — 
and  this  was  his  main  reform — he  re-established  all  the 
imposts  that  had  been  abolished,  increased  all  the 
existing  ones  and  augmented,  sometimes  even  dou- 
bling, the  direct  tribute  payable  by  the  provinces.' 

It  is  easy  to  understand  why  the  empire  endured 
these  new  burdens  without  excessive  complaints. 
Italy  and  the  provinces  had  been  greatly  enriched  by 

'  Suet.,  Vesp.,  16:  professus  quadragies  millies  opus  esse,  ut 
respublica  stare  posset.  Others  read  quadringenties  millies.  But 
four  milliards  of  sesterces  seems  a  more  probable  sum  than  forty 
milliards.  We  must  not  forget  that,  in  its  totality  of  wealth,  the 
ancient  world  was  very  much  poorer  than  the  world  of  today. 

'Suet.,  Vesp.,  16:  Non  enim  contentus  omissa  sub  Galba  vecti- 
galia  revocasse,  nova  el  gravia  addidisse,  auxisse  tributa  provincits, 
nonnuUis  et  duplicasse.  .  .  .  This  passage  is  of  capital  import- 
ance in  the  history  of  the  empire,  for  it  proves  that  Vespasian 
introduced  the  fiscal  system  by  which  the  empire  was  brought  to 
ruin. 


The  Great  Reform  of  the  Senate       251 

the  century  of  peace  and  quietness  of  order  and  secure 
communications  which  they  had  enjoyed.  In  everv 
district  agriculture,  industry,  mines,  and  commerce 
had  developed.  The  population  had  increased.  The 
East  was  flourishing  again  and  the  West  was  beginning 
to  prosper.  Vespasian — to  his  great  credit — under- 
stood that  the  empire  could  stand  an  increased  pres- 
sure of  taxation.  By  imposing  this  pressure  he  did 
the  empire  a  great  service,  for  he  thereby  furnished  the 
means  of  doing  the  great  things  which  made  the  age  of 
the  Antonines  illustrious  in  peace  and  war.  Never- 
theless it  was  he  who  initiated  the  policy  of  great 
expenditure  and  increasing  taxation  which,  growing 
from  generation  to  generation,  ended  by  making  the 
Roman  treasury  the  ruin  of  the  empire. 

75.  The  Great  Reform  of  the  Senate  (73  A.D.). 
Of  even  greater  moment  was  Vespasian's  reform  of 
the  senate.  The  weakness  of  the  senate  had  been  one 
of  the  chief  causes  of  the  crisis  which  followed  the 
death  of  Nero.  Vespasian,  though  he  was  an  Italian 
recently  ennobled,  could  not  take  the  view  that  this 
evil  might  be  remedied  by  substituting  a  new  authority 
for  the  senate.  In  his  eyes,  as  in  those  of  Augustus, 
Tiberius,  and  Claudius,  the  destinies  of  the  senate  were 
the  destinies  of  Rome  itself.  But  he  was  a  sensible 
man,  and  therefore  could  not  conceal  from  himself 
that  the  customary  procedure  which  had  been  used 
since  the  days  of  Augustus  was  quite  inadequate 
to  effect  the  regeneration  of  an  institution  so  much 
enfeebled  by  age.  This  was  especially  the  case  after 
an  atrocious  civil  war,  in  the  course  of  which  so 
many  senatorial  and  equestrian  families  had  been  de- 
stroyed. Taking  advantage,  therefore,  of  the  severe 
shock  which  the  great  crisis  had  given  to  the  pre- 


252  The  Flavians 

judices,  the  doubts,  the  inertia,  and  the  selfishness  of 
the  ruling  cliques  and  classes,  he  ventured  on  a  meas- 
ure which  many  people  had  for  long  recognized  to  be 
necessary,  but  which  no  one  had  dared  to  carry  out 
from  fear  of  the  rigid  exclusiveness  of  ancient  Roman 
ideas.  In  73  he  caused  himself  to  be  elected  censor,  and 
not  only  expelled  unworthy  members  from  the  senate, 
but  at  least  effected  a  vigorous  infusion  of  new  blood, 
into  the  senatorial  and  equestrian  orders.  Carrying 
out  on  a  great  scale  and  with  much  more  vigour  the 
policy  which  Claudius  had  already  timidly  adum- 
brated, he  introduced  into  the  two  orders  about  a 
thousand  new  families,  already,  of  course,  possessed 
of  Roman  citizenship,  choosing  them  not  only  in  Italy, 
but  also  among  the  richest,  most  highly  respected  and 
most  influential  inhabitants  of  the  provinces. '  From 
the  names  of  these  families  which  are  known  to  us 
we  may  conclude  that  the  greater  number  came  from 
Northern  Italy,  Spain,  and  Gaul,  and  some  from  Africa, 
while  the  East  supplied  a  much  smaller  number.  The 
reason  for  this  difference  is  clear.  In  the  western 
provinces,  which  when  conquered  were  still  barbarous, 
many  families  had  grown  rich  during  the  past  centur}' 
and  had  adopted  the  ideas  and  the  manners  of  Rome, 
which  to  them  was  a  model  of  high  culture  and  civiliza- 
tion when  compared  with  the  rudeness  of  their  own 
country.  In  the  East,  on  the  contrary,  the  new 
families  which  had  risen  to  opulence  and  culture  since 

'Suet.,  Vesp.,  9:  amplissimos  ordines  .  .  .  purgavit;  supple- 
vitque  recensito  senatu  et  equite,  submotis  indignissimis,  et  honesiis- 
simo  quoque  Italicorum  ac  provincialium  allecto;  Aurel.  Vict., 
CcBs.,  9:  lectis  undiqtie  optimis  viris  mille  gentes  compositcz.  Here 
gentes  simply  means  "families."  These  two  passages  are  of  the 
highest  importance  in  the  history  of  the  empire. 


The  Great  Reform  of  the  Senate       253 

the  time  of  Augustus  had  become  Hellenized  rather 
than  Romanized.  Thus  in  the  space  of  a  centuT}' 
there  had  grown  up  in  Spain  and  Gaul  a  local  aristo- 
cracy with  some  grasp  of  public  affairs  which  had  not 
only  learned  to  speak  good  Latin  and  to  admire  Rome 
in  the  immortal  work  of  Livy,  but  had  also  learned  in 
the  schools  from  the  great  books  of  Virgil,  Horace, 
Cicero,  and  Varro,  all  the  ancient  virtues  of  the  Roman 
aristocracy.  To  these  virtues,  which  the  Roman 
aristocracy  had  itself  now  almost  entirely  lost  under 
the  influence  of  Hellenism,  and  of  which  the  chief  were 
economy,  simplicity,  subordination,  respect  for  tradi- 
tion and  public  spirit,  they  added  a  certain  modera- 
tion and  humanity  and  a  largeness  of  view  derived 
from  the  new  spirit  of  the  time.  Such  were  the 
families  to  whose  care  Vespasian  confided  the  empire 
when  he  summoned  them  to  Rome  to  take  part  in  the 
government. 

This  renovation  of  the  senate  by  the  addition  of  ele- 
ments drawn  from  the  Romanized  provinces  of  the 
West,  an  event  of  capital  importance  to  which  his- 
torians have  not  yet  given  its  due  prominence,  was  the 
most  important  consequence  of  the  tremendous  crisis 
through  which  the  empire  passed  after  the  death  of 
Nero.  After  this  trial  the  tenacious  opposition  offered 
by  the  narrow  selfishness  of  the  old  senatorial  families 
to  every  proposal  for  the  reconstitution  of  the  old 
assembly  disappeared.  Vespasian  was  able  to  do  what 
Claudius  had  timidly  attempted.  But  it  is  his  im- 
mortal glory  to  have  been  able  to  carry  out  this  reform 
when  it  was  most  needed,  for  it  supplied  precisel}^  that 
reinforcement  of  the  Roman  element  to  which  was  due 
the  peace  and  prosperity  enjoyed  by  the  empire  for  a 
century — that  is  to  say,  throughout  the  so-called  age 


254  ^^^  Flavians 

of  the  Antonines.  By  means  of  this  reform  the  West 
was  once  more  to  save  Rome  and  all  Rome  stood  for. 
Just  as  the  conquest  of  Gaul  had  prevented  the  centre 
of  the  empire  from  being  displaced  from  Italy  towards 
the  East,  so  the  Romanized  nobility  of  the  occidental 
provinces  preserved  for  another  century  in  the  institu- 
tions of  the  empire  a  republican  and  a  Latin  character. 
Vespasian  understood  so  thoroughly  that  Rome  must 
seek  new  strength  from  her  European  provinces  that 
his  censorship  culminated  in  the  grant  of  Latin  citizen- 
ship {ius  Latii)  to  Spain,  one  of  the  oldest  and  most 
completely  Romanized  of  the  provinces  (74) . 

76.  Hellenism  and  Romanism  under  Vespasian. 
It  cannot,  however,  be  said  that  Vespasian  was  a 
traditionalist  emperor  like  Tiberius.  In  a  certain 
sense  his  policy  was  self-contradictory;  indeed,  on  its 
contradictions  its  fruitfulncss  depended.  Thanks  to 
the  circumstances  of  his  time  Vespasian  is  distin- 
guished as  the  emperor  who  succeeded  for  a  moment  in 
balancing  the  eastern  and  the  western  provinces  of 
the  empire.  He  was  not  an  avaricious  emperor  ac- 
cording to  the  Latin  tradition  like  Tiberius  and  Galba, 
nor  a  prodigal  emperor  of  the  Asiatic  type  like  Nero. 
He  resembled  Tiberius  in  being  sparing  in  his  personal 
expenditure  and  strict  in  levying  taxation,  but  he  was 
the  first  of  the  emperors  who  were  wise  enough  to 
spend  largely,  having  grasped  the  fact  that  the  new 
generation  would  not  tolerate  a  parsimonious  govern- 
ment such  as  Augustus,  Tiberius,  and  Galba  had  given 
them,  and  that,  in  view  of  the  increased  needs  and  the 
higher  aspirations  of  the  people,  such  a  policy  was 
henceforth  impossible.  His  expenditure  on  public 
works  was  therefore  large.  The  roads  in  Italy  and 
in  the  provinces  and  the  aqueducts  were  repaired. 


Hellenism  and  Romanism  255 

The  archives  in  the  Capitol  were  rearranged  and  the 
Capitol  itself  rebuilt.  Throughout  the  empire  cities 
which  had  been  destroyed  by  fire  or  earthquakes  were 
restored.  On  the  frontiefs  Vespasian  constructed 
military  roads  and  traced  powerful  lines  of  fortifica- 
tions, especially  on  the  Rhine  and  on  the  Danube. 
He  formed  great  intrenched  camps,  such  as  those  of 
Vindobona  (Vienna)  and  Carnuntum  (Petronell). 
He  strengthened  the  fleet  on  the  Danube  and  founded 
numerous  military  colonies.  He  also  spent  much 
money  on  festivals,  banquets,  spectacles,  and  orna- 
mental buildings.  At  Rome  he  repaired  the  theatre 
of  Marcellus  and  began  the  construction  of  the  Flavian 
Amphitheatre  now  known  as  the  Colosseum,  which 
remains  the  most  grandiose  of  the  monuments  of 
ancient  Rome.  Like  Augustus  and  Tiberius  he  was 
generous  in  giving  assistance  to  noble  families  fallen 
into  want,  and  zealous  in  repairing  ancient  temples  and 
restoring  the  most  archaic  forms  of  traditional  re- 
ligion. ^  But  he  was  ready  to  move  with  the  times  and, 
recognizing  that  the  people  had  a  right  to  be  amused, 
he  gave  splendid  money  prizes  to  actors  and  musicians. 
He  was  the  first  to  give  State  protection  to  the  arts, 
by  assigning  allowances,  amounting  to  a  milhon  ses- 
terces, to  certain  of  the  most  celebrated  Greek  and 
Latin  rhetoricians  (among  whom  was  Quintilian) 
who  taught  at  Rome.  Similarly  he  granted  rewards  of 
various  sorts  to  poets,  sculptors,  and  architects,  but 
he  expelled  from  Italy  not  only  the  astrologers  but 
also  those  philosophers  whose  doctrines  and  discus- 
sions seemed  to  him  to  be  contrary'  to  good  sense.  It 
appears,  moreover,  that  he  required  the  heads  of  the 

'  Cf.  C.  I.  L.,  vi.,  934,  in  which  inscription  Vespasian  represents 
himself  as  a  conservator  of  ancient  rites. 


25^>  The  Flavians 

different  philosophical  schools  in  Greece  to  be  Roman 
citizens. '  In  a  word  he  presented  a  harmonious  blend 
of  Nero  and  Tiberius,  and,  while  he  held  fast  to  the 
vital  elements  of  Roman  tradition,  he  recognized  the 
claims  of  the  invading  Hellenism. 

He  died  in  peace  on  June  24,  79,  at  the  age  of  sixty- 
nine  after  a  term  of  power  which  had  been  threatened 
by  few  conspiracies  and  stained  by  few  acts  of  repres- 
sion, leaving  behind  him  no  such  infamous  and  ex- 
travagant legend  as  has  persecuted  the  memory  of 
Tiberius  and  Claudius.  Historians  have  attributed 
this  to  the  humanity  of  his  character  which  doubtless 
was  great,  but  which  was  not  the  only  reason.  Tiberius 
and  Claudius  also  endeavoured  to  restrain  accusa- 
tions and  prosecutions  for  treason,  but  without  suc- 
cess. How  was  it  that  Vespasian  succeeded?  It  was 
because  both  the  times  and  the  senate  had  changed. 
After  the  critical  period  of  the  civil  war  when  the 
haughty,  quarrelsome  and  purely  Roman  element 
with  its  rancorous  feuds,  had  been  tempered  by  the 
new  ingredients  from  Italy,  Spain,  and  Gaul,  a  more 
exalted  spirit  of  concord  and  a  more  noble  sense  of  the 
dignity  of  the  assembly  began  to  prevail.  Hence  the 
terrible  gusts  of  mutual  hatred  and  recrimination  of 
former  days  were  not  so  easily  aroused. 

77.  The  Government  of  Titus  (79-81  A.D.).  Im- 
mediately on  the  death  of  Vespasian  his  son  Titus  as- 
sumed the  title  of  Augustus  which  was  confirmed  bj'' 
the  senate.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  reign  of  Titus  did 
not  begin  but  ceased  from  this  moment.  As  we  have 
seen,  he  had  been  his  father's  colleague  since  71. 
When  Vespasian  died  his  difficult  task  was  completed. 

'  Cf.  Barbagallo,  Lo  stato  e  Vistruzione  pubblica  nelVimpero 
romano,  Catania,  191 1,  pp.  108-109. 


Domitian' s  Accession  to  the  Empire   257 

Titus,  moreover,  though  scarcely  forty  years  of  age, 
was  in  a  very  bad  state  of  health.  His  sole  tenure  of 
the  supreme  office  was  therefore  brief  and  in  the  nature 
of  a  tranquil  epilogue  to  that  of  Vespasian.  Titus 
spent  money  like  his  father,  but  even  more  lavishly, 
on  festivals,  donations,  and  public  works.  He  inaugur- 
ated the  Flavian  amphitheatre  with  grandiose  cere- 
monies; he  did  his  best  to  please  everybody  and  to 
injure  no  one;  and  after  twenty-six  months  of  single 
rule  he  died  suddenly,  passing  to  posterity  adorned 
with  the  title  of  amor  ac  delicia  generis  humani  (Sep- 
tember 13,  81).  During  his  brief  reign  there  had  been 
no  conspiracy,  and  the  lex  de  maiestate  had  been  idle. 

78.  Domitian's  Accession  to  the  Empire  (Sep- 
tember 14,  81  A.D.).  The  Conquest  of  Britain  (77-84 
A.D.).  The  First  Wars  in  Germany  (83  A.D.).  Titus 
had  a  brother,  T.  Flavius  Domitianus,  then  a  young 
man  of  thirty.  The  emperor  had  not  breathed  his  last 
before  Domitian  galloped  from  his  villa  at  Reate  to  the 
camp  of  the  Praetorians  at  Rome  to  receive  their  first 
salutations  as  successor  in  the  empire.  The  senate 
was  invited  to  acquiesce  in  this  revolutionary  form 
of  election  and  once  more,  though  this  time  with 
greater  repugnance,  they  accepted  the  fait  accompli  to 
avoid  worse.  On  September  14,  81,  Domitian  became 
princeps. 

Domitian  was  undoubtedly  a  man  of  intelligence, 
fond  of  literature  and  of  books,  himself  a  poet  and  a 
lover  of  the  fine  arts,  a  patron  of  scholars  and  of  libra- 
ries— in  a  word  a  Hellenist.  But  he  was  not,  at  an}^ 
rate  at  first,  a  second  Nero.  He  took  the  supreme 
power  with  the  intention  of  continuing  his  father's 
policy  of  countenancing  the  advance  of  Hellenism, 
while  at  the  same  time,  reinforcing  the  Latin  tradition 

VOL.     II 17 


f  1 


26o  The  Flavians 

peaceful  years  there  had  been  several  collisions  be- 
tween the  emperor  and  the  senate.  The  senate,  for 
instance,  in  82  had  tried  without  success  to  establish 
the  immunity  of  its  members  from  the  jurisdiction 
of  the  princeps.  Their  relations,  however,  did  not 
become  at  all  strained  until  towards  85,  after  the  Ger- 
man expedition,  when  Domitian,  like  his  father,  as- 
sumed the  censorship,  and  particularly  when  he  caused 
himself  to  be  appointed  to  that  office  for  life.  In  order 
to  understand  Domitian 's  government,  the  struggles 
by  which  it  was  distracted,  and  the  catastrophe  in 
which  it  ended,  it  is  necessary  to  understand  fully  the 
meaning  of  this  act.  The  censor,  the  most  exalted  but 
also  the  most  dreaded,  of  Roman  magistrates,  had 
among  other  powers  that  of  appointing  new  senators 
for  exceptional  reasons  and  of  ejecting  from  the  senate 
persons  who  already  held  the  rank  of  senator.  He  was 
in  a  sense  the.  judge  and  arbiter  of  the  senate.  For 
this  reason  there  had  been  a  time  when  all  parties  in 
the  State  came  to  an  tmderstanding  that  no  more  cen- 
sors should  be  appointed.  So  heavy  was  the  respon- 
sibility of  the  office  that  the  emperors  themselves, 
even  the  most  powerful  such  as  Augustus  and  Ves- 
pasian, had  accepted  the  censorship  unwillingly,  and 
only  as  a  temporary  measure  dictated  by  the  pressure 
of  public  opinion  and  circumstances  of  exceptional 
gravity.  Vespasian,  for  example,  did  so  after  a  tre- 
mendous civil  war  which  had  necessitated  a  recon- 
struction of  the  assembly.  The  senate  was  a  body 
which  renewed  itself  practically  automatically,  for  all 
who  had  served  the  office  of  qusestor  became  senators 
by  right  at  the  end  of  their  term,  and  once  a  man  had 
become  a  senator  he  could  not  be  dispossessed  of 
his  rank  except  a§  the  result  of  a  trial.     Now  the 


The  Dacian  War  261 

assumption  of  the  censorship  in  perpetuity  by  Do- 
mitian  meant  that  the  emperor  wished  to  resume  the 
power  of  expelling  from  the  senate  all  those  whom  he 
considered  unworthy  or  dangerous,  and  in  fact  to 
bring  the  assembly  entirely  under  his  control.  The 
senate  which  Vespasian  had  reinvigorated  with  new 
energy  revolted  against  the  imperial  pretensions, 
which  even  Augustus  and  Vespasian  had  not  ven- 
tured to  put  forward,  and  from  this  moment  began 
an  implacable  conflict  between  the  new  aristocracy 
and  Domitian. 

80.  The  Dacian  War  (85-89  A.D.).  In  the  years 
85-86  grave  external  events  supervened  to  com- 
plicate the  internal  struggle.  The  Dacians,  who  had 
for  long  been  seated  in  the  plain  now  inhabited  by  the 
Hungarians  and  the  Rumanians,  had  been  threaten- 
ing the  right  bank  of  the  Danube  since  the  time  of 
Nero.  This  threat  had  become  more  serious  during 
the  recent  civil  war,  when  Antonius  Primus  had  emp- 
tied Moesia  of  troops.  But  (shortly,  it  would  seem, 
before  Domitian 's  accession)  an  even  more  notable 
development  had  taken  place — the  union  of  these  scat- 
tered tribes  in  a  single  State  under  an  extremely  able 
chief  named  Decebalus  who  on  the  one  hand  did  all  he 
could  to  civilize  his  people  and  on  the  other  armed 
them  powerfully  and  entered  into  close  relations  with 
his  neighbours.  In  85,  Decebalus  suddenly  crossed  the 
Danube,  surprised  and  defeated  the  governor  of 
Moesia,  and  invaded  the  province.  The  accounts 
given  by  ancient  historians  are  so  imperfect  that  it  is 
impossible  to  relate  the  events  of  the  war  that  fol- 
lowed or  to  estimate  Domitian's  conduct  of  the  cam- 
paign. We  are  told  that  Domitian  hastened  from 
Rome  to  the  invaded  province  where  he  gave  orders  for 


264  The  Flavians 

manni,  who  were  in  the  end  beaten  and  compelled 
to  make  peace.' 

81.  The  Catastrophe  (89-96  A.D.).  The  discord 
between  the  senate  and  the  emperor,  however,  was 
now  incurable.  The  settled  hostility  and  implacable 
criticisms  of  the  senate  could  not  fail  to  irritate  more 
and  more  a  suspicious,  haughty,  and  violent  man  like 
Domitian,  and  naturally  drove  him  to  the  adoption  of 
more  and  more  arbitrary  measures.  These  in  their 
turn  inevitably  exasperated  the  resistance  of  a  body 
which,  like  the  senate,  had  recovered  something  of  its 
old  energy  owing  to  the  new  blood  transfused  into  it 
by  Vespasian.  The  critical  state  of  the  finances  ag- 
gravated a  situation  which  was  already  bad.  The 
prodigality  of  Vespasian  and  Titus,  which  Domitian 
had  continued,  the  mmierous  wars,  and  the  increase 
by  three  aurei  of  the  pay  of  the  legions  had  disorgan- 
ized imperial  finance.  Money  had  to  be  found 
somehow.  Domitian 's  government,  already  inclined 
to  violence,  soon  became  rapacious  as  well.^  Once 
more  there  was  an  outbreak  of  the  legacy-hunting 
which  in  his  early  days  Domitian  had  so  much  de- 
plored, the  lex  de  maiestate  was  once  more  used  as  a 
means  of  raising  money  and  the  collection  of  the  taxes 
was  carried  out  with  increasing  severity.  The  senate 
in  particular  had  to  lament  the  continual  growth  of 
the  scope  of  the  imperial  fisciis  at  the  expense  of  the 
cBrarium  of  the  republic.  At  Rome  there  was  another 
storm  of  delations,  State  trials,  scandals,  and  conspir- 
acies which  exasperated  Domitian's  violent  and  sus- 
picious temper  and  in  the  end  appear  really  to  have 

'  Euseb.  Hieron.,  Chron.,  ed.  Shoene,  pp.  160-161.  Aurel.  Vict., 
Epit.,  xi.,  2. 

^  Cj.  Suel.,  Domit.,  12, 


The  Catastrophe  265 

deranged  his  mind.  A  kind  of  tyrannic  frenzy  seems 
to  have  taken  possession  of  him,  and  to  have  impelled 
him  to  imitate  Caligula  by  proclaiming  himself  a  god, 
after  the  fashion  of  the  ancient  kings  of  Egypt.  But 
Rome  was  not  Alexandria,  and  there  was  as  yet  no 
room  within  her  walls  for  a  despot  who  desired  to  be 
worshipped.  Domitian's  principate  dragged  on  till  96, 
the  prince  ever  more  gloomy,  violent,  and  suspicious. 
In  the  latter  year,  a  vast  intrigue  in  which  several  of 
his  ministers  and  finally  his  wife  and  both  the  prteto- 
rian  prasfects  took  part,  at  last  quelled  his  despotic 
spirit.  On  the  eighteenth  of  September,  Domitian 
was  despatched  by  the  dagger  of  an  assassin  in  his 
forty-fifth  year  after  ruling  for  fifteen  years  and  five 
days. 


268  The  Republic  of  Trajan 

always  hung  over  him  like  the  sword  of  Damocles, 
for  all  his  wisdom  and  honesty.  The  danger  was  so 
serious  that  in  October,  97,  the  emperor,  in  full  agree- 
ment with  the  senate,  followed  the  precedents  of 
Augustus,  Galba,  and  Vespasian,  and  adopted  M. 
Ulpius  Traianus,  governor  of  one  of  the  two  Ger- 
manics (whether  of  Upper  Germany  or  Lower  is  un- 
certain) and  one  of  the  most  illustrious  soldiers  of  his 
time.  As  in  the  days  when  Augustus  and  Agrippa 
had  been  colleagues,  the  empire  now  had  a  military 
and  a  civil  chief.  This,  however,  did  not  last  long. 
Three  months  later,  in  the  early  days  of  98,  Trajan 
received  at  Colonia  (Cologne)  the  news  that  the 
emperor  who  had  appointed  him  his  colleague  was 
dead,  and  that  the  senate  had  entrusted  the  empire  to 
him  alone,  vesting  the  supreme  office  in  its  entirety  in 
his  person. 

83.  The  First  Years  of  Trajan  (98-101  A.D.).  The 
New  Aristocracy  and  the  Republican  Renascence. 
To  the  letter  from  the  senate  which  recognized  him  as 
sole  emperor  Trajan  replied  with  noble  simplicity. 
He  thanked  them  and  renewed  the  pledge  given  by 
Nerva  never  to  be  judge  in  a  capital  charge  against 
any  senator.  Leaving  the  senate  to  govern  the  re- 
public in  the  meantime  he  remained  for  two  years 
longer  on  the  Rhine  in  order  to  carry  out  the  military 
mission  entrusted  to  him  by  Nerva.  It  was  not  until 
the  year  99  that  he  returned  to  Rome,  when,  renewing 
the  tradition  of  antique  republican  simplicity  in  his 
very  act  and  deed,  he  entered  the  capital  on  foot, 
passed  without  pomp  among  the  holiday  crowds,  took 
up  his  abode  in  a  modest  house  where  he  lived  without 
splendour  or  ceremony,  and  received  and  spoke  famil- 
iarly with  all  who  approached  him.     He  neither  was 


The  First   Years  of  Trajan  269 

nor  wished  to  be  more  than  the  most  powerful  of  the 
senators,  and  his  policy  corresponded  to  his  manner 
of  life.  The  senate  was  frequently  consulted  even  on 
questions  relating  to  foreign  affairs.  The  ambitions 
and  the  vanity  of  the  nobility  were  satisfied;  treason 
trials  were  things  of  the  past ;  informers  were  severely 
punished.  The  aristocratic  character  of  the  govern- 
ment was  respected,  for  all  the  highest  offices  of  State 
were  reserved  for  the  senatorial  order.  In  return 
the  senate  showed  the  new  emperor,  though  with  sin- 
cerity and  without  loss  of  dignity,  the  respect  which 
was  his  due  as  primus  inter  pares,  and  for  the  first  time 
the  empire  saw  perfect  concord  between  a  prince  who 
was  a  model  of  all  the  ancient  republican  virtues  and 
the  senate  in  which  the  feuds  of  cliques  and  cabals  by 
which  it  had  been  so  long  distracted  were  now  finally 
extinguished  in  a  new  spirit  of  harmony.  Two  things 
which  had  seemed  irreconcilable — -liberty  and  the 
principate — were  now  at  last  reconciled.  Rome  at 
last  had  an  emperor  whom  the  nobility  unanimously 
admired.  To  the  republic  of  Augustus  had  succeeded 
the  republic  of  Trajan,  and  how  much  more  tranquil 
and  better  ordered  was  the  latter  than  the  former ! 

This  was  such  an  unexpected  phenomenon  that  con- 
temporaries were  amazed.  Yet  it  was  no  miracle  but 
merely  the  result  of  the  great  reform  of  the  senate 
accomplished  by  Vespasian  which  was  now  bringing 
forth  its  fruit,  and  of  the  definitive  accession  to  power 
of  the  provincial  nobility  which  once  more,  and  for 
the  last  time,  revived  the  traditions  and  the  institu- 
tions of  the  old  republic.  The  families  from  northern 
Italy,  from  Gaul,  Spain,  and  Africa  of  which  it  was 
composed  had  been  refined  by  an  education  in  rhe- 
toric and  literature  based  chiefly  on  the  great  writers 


2']2  The  Republic  of  Trajan 

were  longing.  His  first  sojourn  at  Rome  was  brief, 
and  was  not  extended  much  beyond  the  end  of  loi — 
the  time  needed  to  prepare,  in  concert  with  the  senate, 
a  great  expedition  against  Dacia  with  an  army  of 
eight  legions,  a  force  which,  with  the  auxiliary  contin- 
gents and  the  ten  praetorian  cohorts,  amounted  to  at 
least  100,000  men.  In  the  spring  of  loi,  when  these 
preparations  were  complete,  Trajan  declared  war  on 
Decebalus.  The  history  of  the  great  struggle  which 
followed  is  far  from  clear.  We  know  that  Dacia  was 
invaded  by  three  armies,  that  the  Dacians  defended 
themselves  with  energy  and  skill,  that  Trajan  won  a 
signal  but  extremely  costly  victory  at  the  Iron  Gates 
(Taps) ,  but  that  this  victory  was  not  enough  to  com- 
pel the  enemy  to  make  peace.  The  emperor  had  to 
pursue  his  advance  and  threaten  the  heart  and  capital 
of  the  kingdom.  Then,  but  not  till  then,  Decebalus 
accepted  the  conditions  imposed  by  Trajan.  He 
declared  himself  a  vassal  of  Rome,  abandoned  the 
territories  he  had  conquered  at  the  expense  of  the 
neighboiu'ing  peoples,  handed  over  his  war  material 
and  demolished  his  fortresses  (102). 

In  the  following  year  the  emperor  returned  to  Rome 
to  solemnize  his  triimiph,  but  the  peace  with  Decebalus 
turned  out  to  be  merely  a  truce.  This  new  Mithri- 
dates  restored  his  fortresses,  prepared  new  muni- 
tions, received  Roman  deserters  into  his  armies,  and 
concluded  new  alliances  including,  it  is  said,  one  with 
the  far  off  Parthians.  At  the  end  of  104  the  senate 
was  again  faced  with  the  necessity  of  sending  an  ex- 
pedition— this  time  on  an  even  larger  scale,  and  war 
with  Dacia  again  broke  out  in  105.  The  second  cam- 
paign was  no  easier  than  the  first.  Abandoned  by  his 
allies  and  by  part  of  his  own  people,  Decebalus  retired 


The  War  against  Dacia  273 

slowly  into  the  interior  of  the  country,  offering  resist- 
ance in  the  mountain  passes,  burning  the  crops  and  the 
towns,  and  compelling  the  Romans  to  undergo  terrible 
hardships  and  to  make  very  great  sacrifices.  In  the 
end,  after  a  strenuous  defence,  the  king  and  the  nobil- 
ity of  the  country  either  committed  suicide  by  the 
sword  or  by  poison,  or  were  massacred,  or  contrived  to 
escape  across  the  frontier,  and  Dacia  was  proclaimed 
a  Roman  province. 

As  the  greater  part  of  the  population  either  had 
been  slain  or  had  fled  or  had  been  reduced  to  slavery 
the  country  was  half  deserted,  and  Trajan,  who  did  not 
wish  to  have  a  depopulated  province  on  the  frontiers 
of  his  empire,  conceived  a  vast  plan  of  colonization. 
Settlers  were  invited  to  come  to  the  new  conquest  from 
all  parts  of  the  empire,  companies  of  entrepreneurs 
hastened  to  organize  the  exploitation  of  the  Carpathian 
mines  or  the  transport  of  the  grain  grown  in  the  fertile 
plains  on  the  banks  of  the  Danube.  The  State  as- 
sisted the  development  of  the  new  province  in  every 
possible  way  by  building  towns  and  constructing  roads, 
and  the  plan  on  which  no  expense  was  spared  had  a 
rapid  success.  The  result  was  that  where  there  had 
been  a  Germanic  kingdom  there  was  now  a  Roman 
province,  the  majority  of  the  population  of  which 
were  a  Mediterranean  race  of  medium  stature  with 
dark  eyes  and  hair  contrasting  strangely  with  the  tall 
survivors  of  the  native  population  with  their  blue  eyes 
and  flaxen  locks.  The  language  of  Rome  is  spoken  to 
this  day  in  this  country,  which  is  none  other  than  the 
Greater  Rumania  dreamed  of  by  their  brothers  across 
the  Danube  who  pant  to  deliver  their  fellow  coiintry- 
men  from  German  and  Hungarian  oppression.  The 
Roman  Empire  in  the  West  had  been  enlarged  by  a 


VOL.    II iS 


274  ^^^  Republic  of  Trajan 

vast  province  which  for  several  generations  was  to  be 
what  we  now  call  a  "new  country  "  offering  a  free  field 
to  the  resolute  immigrant,  full  of  dangers  but  present- 
ing many  opportunities  of  making  a  fortune. 

85.  The  Civil  Administration  of  Trajan  (106-114 
A.D.)-  In  the  same  year  in  which  Trajan  completed 
his  difficult  conquest  of  Dacia  A.  Cornelius  Palma,  one 
of  his  lieutenants,  acquired  another  province  for  the 
empire,  namely  Arabia  Petraea,  the  country  extending 
from  the  Red  Sea  to  the  west  of  Palestine  as  far  as 
Damascus,  and  including  practically  all  Sinai  and  the 
wealthy  cities  of  Petra  and  Bostra.  The  new  con- 
quest was  immediately  styled  the  province  of  Arabia 
(106)  and  the  emperor,  ruling  in  accord  with  the 
senate,  had  in  a  few  years  increased  the  empire  by 
two  provinces,  one  in  the  West,  the  other  in  the  East. 

From  this  time  began  a  series  of  nine  peaceful  years 
during  which  the  new  nobility  might  well  believe  that 
the  most  glorious  epoch  of  the  republic  had  returned. 
"At  last  the  nobles,"  says  the  younger  Pliny  in  his 
famous  Panegyricus,  "instead  of  being  overshadowed 
by  the  Prince,  received  renewed  splendours  from  him 
every  day.  At  last  there  was  a  Prince  who  did  not 
fear  the  illustrious  descendants  of  heroes,  the  latest 
heirs  of  liberty.  On  the  contrary  his  only  desire 
was  to  hasten  the  day  when  they  would  take  office. 
.  .  .  Wherever  there  was  to  be  found  a  branch  of 
an  ancient  stock,  the  remnant  of  an  ancient  glory,  he 
protected  and  revered  it  and  used  it  for  the  good  of  the 
republic.  Great  names,  snatched  from  oblivion  by 
the  generosity  of  the  Prince,  whose  merit  lay  as  much 
in  restoring  as  in  creating  an  aristocracy,  were  re- 
stored to  honour  and  to  their  rightful  fame."*     There 

•  Plin.,  Paneg.,  69. 


The  Civil  Administration  of  Trajan  275 

was  an  end  of  trials,  scandals,  delation,  and  suspicion, 
and  the  republican  tradition  was  again  honoured. 
Titinius  Capito,  one  of  the  emperor's  secretaries,  put 
the  images  of  Brutus,  Cassius,  and  Cato  in  a  place  of 
honour  in  his  house  and  wrote  verses  in  praise  of  these 
illustrious  citizens  which  he  read  in  public  to  an  aud- 
ience composed  of  all  that  was  best  in  Roman  society. 
The  emperor  himself  struck  coins  bearing  the  effigies 
of  Sulla,  Brutus,  Cicero,  Cato  of  Utica,  and  even  of  the 
genius  of  Liberty.  The  senate  and  the  magistrates  of 
the  republic  were  treated  by  the  Spanish  emperor  with 
a  respect  of  which  the  old  Roman  nobility  had  long 
been  incapable.  Trajan  even  introduced  secret  votes 
in  the  senate  in  order  to  free  its  members  from  the 
oppressive  control  of  the  princeps.  The  activities  of 
government  were  multiplied  in  every  sphere.  Grandi- 
ose public  works  were  ordered  in  all  parts  of  the  empire 
in  order  both  to  provide  for  the  exigences  of  public 
utility  and  to  commemorate  the  glorious  achievements 
of  the  time.  The  harbours  of  Italy  on  the  Adriatic 
and  on  the  Tyrrhene  Sea  such  as  Ancona,  Ostia, 
and  Centumcellae  (Civitavecchia)  were  improved.  At 
Rome  public  libraries  were  opened,  and  from  the 
plans  of  Apollodorus  of  Damascus  was  built  the 
Forum  of  Trajan,  from  the  midst  of  which  still  rises 
the  column  recounting  in  its  bas  reliefs  the  history 
of  the  Dacian  Wars. 

Italy  was  now  invaded  by  enriched  and  Romanized 
families  from  the  provinces,  who  wished  to  serve  the 
empire  and  to  be  admitted  to  the  nobility  by  which  it 
was  governed.  Trajan  renewed  one  of  the  rules  made 
by  Tiberius,  which  was  that  every  provincial  who 
wished  to  become  a  candidate  for  office  at  Rome  must 
invest  a  third  of  his  capital  in  real  property  in  Italy. 


2^6  The  Republic  of  Trajan 

This  was  a  clear  intimation  from  the  Spaniard  who  had 
become  emperor  to  all  provincials  whose  ambition  it 
was  to  follow  his  example,  that  for  all  those  who  as- 
pired to  be  her  governors  Italy  must  be  an  abiding 
city  and  not  a  caravanserai.  Like  Augustus,  Trajan 
did  not  wish  the  Italic  population  to  diminish ;  he  took 
pains  to  check  emigration,  and  developed  the  orphan- 
ages which  Nerva  had  scarcely  had  time  to  form.' 
Fixed  sums  were  assigned  to  the  municipia  by  the 
treasury  to  be  lent  at  moderate  interest  to  private 
persons  on  the  security  of  their  property.  The  interest 
thus  paid  was  to  be  used  to  bring  up  and  educate  poor 
boys,  legitimate  or  illegitimate,  and,  to  a  less  degree, 
poor  girls,  to  whom  at  a  certain  age  Roman  citizenship 
was  to  be  granted.  The  object  of  these  institutions 
was  twofold.  On  the  one  hand,  they  were  intended 
to  increase  the  number  of  the  lower  class  which  fur- 
nished soldiers  for  the  legions,  and  on  the  other  to  help 
Italian  agriculture  by  means  of  loans  on  specially 
favourable  terms.  They  were,  or  seemed  to  be,  so 
necessary  and  beneficial  that  they  were  immediately 
imitated  by  many  of  the  great  families  of  the  empire 
each  in  proportion  to  its  power.  The  aristocracy 
now  adopted  the  new  principle  that  its  privileges  were 
to  be  counterbalanced  by  equally  important  duties 
towards  the  lower  classes  and  towards  the  State,  that, 
in  the  words  of  Pliny  "the  truly  generous  man  should 
give  to  his  country,  to  his  neighbours,  to  his  poorer 
friend ....  He  should  go  in  search  of  those  whom 
he  knows  to  be  in  need,  should  succour  and  support 
them,  and  make  of  them  as  it  were  a  second  family."^ 

'  Plin.,  Paneg.,  27-28;  c£.  C.  I.  L.,ix.,  1455;  xi.,  1127. 
'  Plin.,  Epist.,  ix.,  30.    The  best  commentary  on  these  words  of 
Pliny  is  to  be  found  in  the  number  of  charitable  institutions 


The  Civil  Administration  of  Trajan  277 

The  restoration  of  the  repubHc,  for  which  Augustus 
and  Tiberius  had  worked  so  hard  seemed  therefore  to 
have  been  at  last  accomph'shed  by  the  agency  of  a 
Spaniard.  Rome  at  last  had  an  emperor  who  used  his 
supreme  power  of  control  in  the  manner  dreamed  of  by 
Cicero,  with  full  respect  for  the  rights  of  the  senate 
and  the  magistrates,  a  senate  which,  without  envy 
or  jealousy,  had  recognised  the  necessity  of  this  su- 
preme Officer  of  State  and  supported  and  obeyed  him 
loyally.  If,  however,  Trajan  may  be  viewed  in  one 
aspect  as  the  restorer  of  ancient  Rome,  he  was  in  an- 
other sphere,  namely  finance,  a  representative  of  the 
spirit  of  the  new  age.  Ancient  historians  praise  his 
success  in  providing  for  public  expenditure  without  in- 
creasing taxation,  and  indeed  while  reducing  certain 
imposts.  But,  though  this  is  true,  it  is  also  the 
fact  that  his  finance  was  not  the  old  traditional  par- 
simonious finance  of  the  republic,  of  Augustus,  and 
Tiberius,  which  was  averse  to  all  new  expense.  It 
was  the  finance  of  Vespasian  required  by  the  new  era, 
and  it  was  accordingly  lavish  of  expenditure.  Trajan's 
government  spent  without  counting  the  cost  on  public 
works,  on  what  we  should  now  call  outdoor  relief,  on 
colonization,  on  intellectual  culture,  and  on  war.  If 
he  was  able  to  keep  up  so  profuse  an  expenditure  with- 
out increasing  the  taxes,  the  explanation  must  be  that 
the  spoils  of  war,  the  lands,  and  the  mines  of  Dacia, 
and  above  all  the  natural  increase  of  the  revenue,  ow- 
ing to  the  increase  of  population  and  riches,  gave  him 
what  he  required  without  compelling  him  to  resort  to 
new  ways  of  raising  money.     In  other  words,   Ves- 

founded  by  private  benefactors  which  were  scattered  all  over  the 
empire.  Cf.  C.  I.  L.,  ii.,  174;  v.,  5262;  viii.,  1641;  x.,  6328;  xi., 
1602;  xiv.,  350. 


2/8  The  Republic  of  Trajan 

pasian's  new  fiscal  system  brought  in  its  maximum 
return  under  Trajan,  thanks  to  the  favourable  char- 
acter of  the  times.  It  is  certain  that,  in  order  to  meet 
that  part  of  his  expenses  for  which  the  increased  re- 
sources of  the  empire  did  not  suffice,  Trajan  like  his 
predecessors  had  recourse  to  the  dangerous  expedient 
of  coining  silver  equal  in  weight  to  that  of  Nero  but  of 
a  much  baser  alloy.  In  other  words,  Trajan,  instead 
of  regulating  expenditure  in  accordance  with  the  real 
wealth  of  the  country,  provided  a  fictitious  prosperity 
for  his  contemporaries,  not  only  consuming  the  fruits 
of  that  wealth  but  also  encroaching  on  the  capital  of 
the  empire,  and  impairing  its  future  reserve.  This 
financial  policy,  though  it  helped  to  pave  the  way  for 
the  catastrophe  we  shall  have  to  relate,  was  one  of  the 
reasons  for  the  success  of  his  reign,  and  for  the  im- 
mense admiration  which  he  excited.  Trajan  could 
spend  profusely  the  funds  of  the  State  without  harass- 
ing the  empire  with  taxation,  and  hence  he  could 
appear  as  a  sort  of  special  providence  and  be  hailed  in 
the  words  of  an  inscription  which  has  come  down  to  us, 
as  locupletator  civium.  *  The  empire  had  long  dreamed 
of  a  government  which  should  give  much  and  take 
little.  It  had  not  been  particularly  grateful  to  Augus- 
tus and  Tiberius  for  the  moderation  of  their  exactions 
because  they  had  been  niggardly  in  their  expenditure. 
The  generosity  of  Nero  and  Domitian  had  been  equally 
little  appreciated  because,  in  the  end,  these  princes 
had  been  compelled  to  recur  to  violence  and  extortion 
in  order  to  proctu-e  the  means  of  meeting  the  cost  of 
their  enormous  prodigalities.  Trajan,  owing  to  the 
happiness  and  prosperity  of  the  time,  was  able  to 
spend  like  Nero  and  Domitian  while  he  treated  the 
•  C.  I.  L.,  vi.,  958. 


Traja,:  and  Christianity  279 

taxpayer  like  Augu3tus  and  Tiberius.  Thus  every 
one  thought  that  he  could  make  the  State  a  fountain 
of  universal  prosperity,  and  his  prodigal  finance  en- 
abled him  to  reap  a  harvest  of  glory  for  which  others 
were  destined  to  pay  dearly  at  a  later  day. 

86.  Trajan  and  Christianity.  Trajan,  so  far  as  we 
know,  was  the  first  emiDcror  who  had  to  take  official 
notice  of  Christianity.  This  fact  is  too  important  to 
be  passed  over  without  full  consideration. 

Christianity  had  made  great  progress,  especially  in 
the  East  and  among  the  most  numerous  classes  in  the 
community.  This  could  not  but  be  the  cause  of  a 
profound  perturbation.  Christianity  was  not  merely 
a  new  religion  to  be  added  to  the  many  which  were 
already  professed  in  the  East;  it  was  a  new  religion 
which  aimed  at  supplanting  all  others.  Pliny  the 
younger  indeed,  writing  to  Trajan  at  this  time  ""rom 
Bithynia,  of  which  he  was  governor,  says  that  the 
temples  of  other  cults  were  beginning  to  be  deserted, 
so  widely  had  Christianity  been  propagated.  ^  But  we 
have  only  to  consider  the  importance  for  the  State 
and  the  individual  which  religion  had  in  the  private 
life  of  the  East  to  understand  how  innumerable  were 
the  reactions  of  threatened  interests  which  the  pro- 
pagation of  Christianity  inevitably  produced.  Where 
Christians  began  to  be  numerous  governors  were 
constantly  pestered  to  hear  informers  who  accused 

'  Plin.,  Episl.,  X.,  96  (17),  10.  Though  the  authenticity  of  this 
letter  has  been  long  and  uselessly  debated,  there  is  no  serious 
reason  to  doubt  its  genuineness.  Cf.  G.  Boissier,  La  lettre  de 
Pline  au  sujet  des  premiers  chretiens,  in  Revue  d'archcologie,  1876; 
Ramsay,  Thx  Church  in  tlie  Roman  Empire  before  lyo  A.D.,  Lon- 
don, 1893,  PP-  196  ff.  V.  AUard,  Histoire  des  persecutions  pendant 
les  deux  premiers  siecles,  pp.  145  ff.  A.  Marmaresi,  L'impero 
fmano  e  il  cristianesimo,  Torino,  1914,  pp.  105  ff. 


28o  The  Republic  of  Trajan 

them  of  all  sorts  of  imaginary  crimes.  Pliny  was 
soon  convinced  that  these  charges  were  unfounded,  and 
that,  though  the  Christians  professed  what  appeared 
to  him  to  be  a  perverse  and  extravagant  superstition 
{superstitio  prava  et  immodica) ,  they  did  nothing  wrong 
at  their  gatherings.  There  was  one  point,  however, 
on  which  the  Christians  were  at  the  mercy  of  their 
enemies,  and  that  was  the  worship  of  the  emperor. 
This  cult  was  now  diffused  throughout  the  provinces, 
and  among  the  infinite  variety  of  religions  professed 
by  the  peoples  subject  to  Rome  it  represented  the 
religious  and  political  bond  which  held  the  whole 
empire  together.  In  every  city  there  was  now  an  altar 
to  the  emperor,  on  which  sacrifice  was  made  on  solemn 
occasions.  When  a  charge  was  made  that  the  Chris- 
tians did  not  sacrifice  to  the  emperor  the  governor  was 
bound  to  investigate  it,  and,  as  the  charge  was  easy 
to  test  and  often  proved  to  be  true,  the  Christians 
very  soon  acquired  the  reputation  of  being  rebels. 
That  their  refusal  to  worship  the  images  of  the  emperor 
was  compatible  (as  it  in  fact  was)  with  the  truest 
loyalty  and  obedience  to  the  imperial  authority,  was 
a  thing  that  the  Roman  authorities  could  neither 
understand  nor  admit,  as  the  exclusive  religious  spirit 
which  inspired  the  Christians  was  entirely  strange  to 
the  Grasco-Latin  spirit.  But  indeed  the  position  of  the 
Christians  was  still  very  confused  and  uncertain,  both 
from  the  political  and  the  legal  point  of  view,  and 
therefore  a  time  came  when  Pliny  from  the  depths  of 
his  province  asked  Trajan  for  instructions.  Trajan 
replied  by  laying  down  a  rule  which  was  rough  and 
ready  but  very  mild,  considering  the  times.  The 
Christians  were  not  to  be  sought  out  nor  were  anony- 
mous accusations  against  them  to  be  permitted.     But 


The  Wars  in  the  East  281 

if  they  were  denounced  and  refused  to  venerate  the 
imperial  images  and  confessed  that  they  were  Chris- 
tians they  were  to  be  punished.^ 

This  is  what  has  (very  improperly)  been  called  the 
persecution  of  Trajan.  The  truth  is  that  Trajan 
gave  the  enemies  of  the  Christians  who  called  for  the 
application  of  the  utmost  rigour  of  the  law,  the  least 
and  mildest  satisfaction  that  he  could.  In  a  certain 
sense  his  decision  was  rather  a  defence  of  the  Christians 
than  a  persecution  if  the  concessions  it  made  are 
compared  with  what  the  enemies  of  the  Christians 
demanded.  The  imperial  authorities,  in  fact,  did 
Christianity  a  service  by  bringing  it  to  a  legal  trial, 
for  they  thereby  saved  the  Christians  from  the  exter- 
mination which  the  popular  fury  of  their  enemies  in 
every  country  had  vowed  against  them,  and  would 
probably  have  accomplished  had  it  not  been  checked 
by  the  authority  of  the  empire  which  was  independent 
of  local  influences. 

87.  The  Wars  in  me  East  (114-116  A.D.). 
About  the  end  of  113  or  the  beginning  of  114,  the 
senate  honoured  the  emperor  with  the  solemn  title 
which  paganism  had  attributed  to  Jove,  the  title  of 
Optimiis.^  The  nine  5^ears  of  peace  which  had  now 
passed  had  not  been  an  end  in  themselves.  They  had 
served  for  the  preparation  of  a  great  warlike  enterprise 
in  the  East  analogous  to  the  conquest  of  Dacia  in  the 
West.  Trajan's  purpose  was  to  resume  and  enlarge 
the  great  design  of  Caesar  and  Antony  and  to  advance 
like  Alexander  the  Great  to  the  conquest  of  all  the 
East  from  the  Euphrates  to  the  shores  of  the  Persian 
Gulf.     Oriental  affairs,  always  in  unstable  equilibrium, 

•  Plin.,  Epist.,  X.,  97  (98). 
=  Plin.,  Pancz-,  2. 


282  The  Republic  of  Trajan 

required  a  new  intervention  on  the  part  of  Rome  about 
the  year  114,  because  Chosroes,  King  of  Parthia,  had 
placed  his  nephew  Parthomasiris  on  the  throne  of 
Armenia.  Parthia  was  at  this  time  distracted  by  civil 
war.  Chosroes  was  one  of  three  kings  who  were  fight- 
ing for  the  throne  and,  this  being  so,  it  would  not  have 
been  difficult  to  fight  Parthia  with  Parthian  aid  if 
Trajan  had  desired  to  continue  the  policy  of  Augustus 
and  Tiberius.  Trajan,  however,  was  a  great  soldier 
and,  like  the  new  aristocracy  whose  hero  he  was,  he 
wished  to  cover  the  Roman  arms  with  new  glory  on 
every  frontier  of  the  empire.  He  thought  that  the 
time  had  come  to  cut  the  Gordian  knot  of  the  Eastern 
question  with  the  sword,  instead  of  complicating  it 
still  further  with  new  schemes  of  negotiation.  The 
disorder  of  the  Parthian  Empire  seemed  to  present 
favourable  opportunity  for  action.  In  the  spring  of 
114,  therefore,  Trajan  left  Antioch  at  the  head  of  a 
great  force  to  conquer  Armenia.  In  vain  Parthoma- 
siris presented  himself  unarmed  in  the  Roman  camp 
begging  that  he  might  be  invested  with  the  Kingdom; 
Armenia  was  proclaimed  a  Roman  province  (114). 
Mesopotamia  was  invaded  in  the  following  year  and 
its  upper  portion  was  also  declared  a  province  (115). 
But  the  real  attack  on  the  Parthian  empire  was  not 
commenced  until  the  spring  of  116.  In  that  year, 
having  crossed  the  Tigris,  Trajan  occupied  Adiabene 
and  Assyria,  which  were  also  reduced  to  the  status 
of  provinces.  He  then  marched  again  on  the  Tigris 
and  entered  Ctesiphon  whence  he  continued  his 
triumphal  progress  to  the  shores  of  the  Persian  Gulf 
(116).  This,  at  any  rate,  appears  to  be  the  general 
effect  of  the  confused  accounts  given  by  ancient 
writers. 


The   Wars  in  the  East  283 

Trajan  had  now  reached  the  very  summit  of  his 
renown.  It  seems  that  for  a  moment  he  even  imag- 
ined that  he  had  finally  solved  the  oriental  problem 
and  had  accomplished  what  Caesar  and  Antony  had 
failed  to  do  by  making  Rome  into  a  vast  empire  half 
Asiatic  and  half  European.  If  we  may  believe  the 
ancients  he  went  so  far  as  to  dream  of  an  expedition  to 
India  and  a  glory  greater  than  that  of  Alexander  him- 
self. But  if  such  an  illusion  dazzled  him  for  a  moment 
it  did  not  last  long.  In  his  rear  while  he  was  roaming 
through  Asia  the  fanatical  nationalism  of  the  countries 
he  had  conquered  by  surprise  had  again  awakened. 
In  117  Mesopotamia  and  Assyria  revolted,  and  it 
proved  such  a  difficult  and  sanguinary  task  to  repress 
this  movement  that  Trajan  at  Ctesiphon  found  him- 
self obliged  to  bestow  the  Parthian  crown  on  one  of 
the  three  contending  candidates,  a  certain  Parthamas- 
pates,  hoping  thus  to  prevent  the  Parthians  from  join- 
ing the  insurrection.  But  the  revolt  spread  beyond  the 
Euphrates.  The  Jews,  relentless  in  their  hatred,  seized 
the  opportunity  and  rebelled  in  Palestine,  Cyprus, 
Egypt,  and  Cyrenaica.  Meanwhile  the  Mauri  re- 
simied  their  raids  on  the  province  of  Africa,  the  Bre- 
toni  were  in  a  state  of  unrest,  and  the  Sarmatians 
threatened  once  more  to  break  the  line  of  the  Danube. 

And,  at  the  very  time  when  the  empire  needed  all 
the  energy  and  ijitelligence  of  Trajan,  he  was  carried 
off  by  a  sudden  illness,  dying  at  Selinus  in  August, 
117,  leaving  behind  him  a  sea  of  fire  and  blood,  the 
tragic  heritage  of  a  glorious  reign. 


CHAPTER  XI 

HADRIAN,  THE  GREAT  REFORMER  (117-I38  A.D.) 

88.  The  Adoption  of  Hadrian,  its  Causes  and  its 
Significance.  Under  Trajan  and  after  their  experience 
of  him  the  senatorial  aristocracy,  or  at  any  rate  the 
wiser  among  them,  had  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
adoption  as  practised  by  Nerva  was  the  legitimate 
principle  of  succession  to  the  imperial  dignit}'.  Such 
adoption  was  to  be  carried  out  with  the  consent  of  the 
senate,  and  the  choice  of  a  colleague  who  seemed 
likely  to  be  a  worthy  successor  was  to  be  made  with- 
out any  regard  to  relationship.  The  younger  Pliny 
states  this  explicitly  in  an  important  passage  of  his 
Panegyricus^  This  procedure,  while  it  excluded  the 
hereditary  principle  abhorred  by  the  aristocracy, 
seemed  to  preserve  the  choice  of  the  emperor  from 
the  two  dangers  which  had  vitiated  so  many  elections 
— violence  on  the  part  of  the  soldiers  and  hesitation 
and  discord  in  the  senate.  Trajan,  however,  being  a 
man  full  of  physical  and  mental  energy,  had  never 
felt  in  need  of  the  assistance  of  a  colleague.  It  was 
not  until  he  became  suddenly  aware  of  the  approach  of 

'  CJ.  Plin.,  Paneg.,  7:  Nulla  adoptati  cunt  eo  qui  adoptabat 
cognatio  .  .  .  etc.  Tacitus  {Hist.,  i.,  15  and  16)  about  the  same 
time  expresses  the  same  idea  which  he  puts  in  the  mouth  of  one 
of  his  characters. 

284 


Trajan's  Oriental  Conquests  285 

death  that  he  remembered  this  last  duty  which  he  had 
still  to  perform  for  the  empire  and  the  senate.  Having 
neither  the  time  nor  the  means  to  consult  the  senate 
he  carried  out  without  further  formality  a  plan  he  had 
long  meditated,  and  on  his  deathbed  adopted  P. 
^lius  Hadrianus,  one  of  his  officers  who  was  also  his 
cousin  and  his  nephew  by  marriage. 

89.  The  Renunciation  of  Trajan's  Oriental  Con- 
quests. Like  Trajan,  Hadrian  was  of  Spanish  origin, 
and  belonged  to  the  provincial  nobility.  He  was  a  good 
general  whose  merits  Trajan  had  recognized  by  en- 
trusting him  with  important  commands  in  all  his 
wars.  Shortly  before  his  death,  at  the  moment  when 
he  had  decided  to  return  to  Italy,  Trajan  had  handed 
over  to  Hadrian  the  supreme  command  of  the  army 
of  the  East.  Like  Trajan  again,  Hadrian  was  an 
enthusiastic  believer  in  the  great  aristocratic  and 
republican  tradition.  His  first  thought  on  receiving 
at  Antioch  the  news  of  his  adoption  was  to  recognize 
the  rights  of  the  senate.  He  reminded  the  troops, 
who  had  at  once  acclaimed  him,  that  it  was  for  the 
senate  alone  to  elect  emperors,  and  he  hastened  to 
write  to  the  senate  requesting  the  confirmation  of  his 
imperial  authority  and  excusing  himself  for  having 
exercised  the  power  in  the  meantime  on  the  ground 
that  the  empire  could  not  be  left  without  a  head  in 
these  critical  times.  Soon  afterwards  he  repeated  the 
promise  made  by  Trajan  that  he  would  not  condemn 
any  senator,  and  he  lost  no  opportunity  of  affirming 
that  the  State  belonged  not  to  him  but  to  the  peo- 
ple.^ Nevertheless  his  first  acts  as  emperor  were 
the  abandonment  of  all  Trajan's  oriental  conquests  ex- 
cept Arabia   Petraea  and  the  withdrawal  of  the  fron- 

'  [Hist.  Aug.]  Hadr.,  viii.,  3. 


286  Iladriajt,  the  Great  Reformer 

tiers  of  the  empire  to  the  Euphrates.  He  gave  back 
Assyria  and  Mesopotamia  to  the  Parthians,  recog- 
nized Chosroes,  and  restored  Armenia  to  its  ancient 
independence. 

Hadrian  sought  to  justify  these  acts  by  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  old  republican  policy,  quoting  the  example 
of  Cato  and  other  great  statesmen  of  ancient  Rome 
who  had  so  often  renounced  opportunities  of  ruling 
over  subject  peoples  in  order  not  to  enlarge  the  empire 
unduly.'  It  cannot  now  be  denied  that  his  decision 
was  wise,  but  it  is  certain  that  it  greatly  displeased 
the  upper  classes  at  Rome  who  were  intoxicated  by 
Trajan's  enterprises.  This  was  so  much  the  case  that 
some  of  Trajan's  old  generals,  among  them  Cornelius 
Palma,  the  conqueror  of  Arabia,  took  advantage  of  the 
public  discontent  to  form  a  conspiracy  for  the  over- 
throw of  the  new  emperor.  This  conspiracy  was 
discovered  and  suppressed  by  the  senate  in  Hadrian's 
absence,  but  the  malcontents  were  not  far  wrong  in 
seeing  in  his  actions  an  indication  that  a  new  direction 
was  to  be  given  to  imperial  policy  and  one  contrary 
to  that  of  Trajan.  Hadrian  was  not  merely  a  good 
general  and  a  Roman  senator  imbued  with  the  spirit 
of  the  ancient  aristocracy.  He  was  also  a  passionate 
cultivator  of  literature  and  philosophy,  of  the  fine 
arts,  and  of  science  so  far  as  it  was  then  known.  He 
was  so  ardent  a  Hellenist  that  he  spoke  Greek  better 
than  Latin,  and  before  he  became  emperor  this  had 
procured  him  many  enemies  who  had  given  him  the 
nickname  of  GrcBculus.  In  his  foreign  policy  he  wished 
to  tread  the  path  of  Augustus  and  Tiberius,  and  to 
keep  the  empire  on  the  defensive,  not  only  because  he 
would  live  more  securely  within  restricted  frontiers 

'  [Hist.  Aug.]  Hadr.,  v.,  3. 


Hadrian's  Administrative  Reforyns     287 

but  because  he  would  thus  be  able  to  use  part  of  the 
funds  expended  by  Trajan  in  wars  and  conquests  for 
the  embellishment  of  the  capital,  for  the  spread  of 
education,  and  for  reforms  which  would  make  the 
administration  more  efficient,  more  uniform,  and  more 
just,  and  the  laws  more  humane,  more  reasonable,  and 
less  severe.  In  a  word,  he  wished  to  reconcile  Hellen- 
ism with  its  mastery  of  all  forms  of  culture  to  Roman- 
ism with  its  skill  in  war  and  administration,  in  an 
empire  which  should  be  half  oriental  and  half  occi- 
dental, strong  in  arms,  wise  in  its  government,  and 
splendid  in  the  arts  of  peace.  This  reconciliation  was 
the  supreme  object  pursued  during  his  long  tenure  of 
power  by  this  Romanized  Spaniard.  Owing  to  the 
extreme  uncertainty  of  the  chronology,  we  are  obliged 
to  deal  with  his  principal  acts  in  groups. 

90.  Hadrian's  Administrative  Reforms.  It  has 
been  repeatedly  said  that  Hadrian  was  the  founder  of 
an  absolute  monarchy.  It  would  be  more  true  to 
say  that  he  created  the  civil  bureaucracy  which  was 
afterwards  to  become  the  instriunent  of  absolutism. 
An  emperor  like  Trajan,  whose  chief  preoccupation 
was  to  enlarge  his  borders  by  war,  had  no  motive  for 
modifying  the  main  outlines  of  administration,  because 
Rome  had  a  complete  mastery  of  the  military  art. 
This  was  not  the  case  with  a  prince  who  wished  to 
perfect  what  we  should  now  call  the  civil  service, 
which  was  rudimentary  in  the  republican  constitution. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  up  to  that  time,  and  more  es- 
pecially from  the  days  of  Claudius,  the  emperors,  in 
order  to  correct  as  far  as  possible  the  defects  of  certain 
branches  of  that  service,  had  made  use  of  freedmen 
who  were  not  actual  public  functionaries,  but  who 
depended  entirely  on  their  patron  and  were  responsible 


288  Hadrian,  the  Great  Reformer 

for  their  acts  to  him  alone.  Too  often  this  had  meant 
that  they  were  uncontrollable  and  irresponsible. 
Hadrian  made  all  these  collaborators  of  the  emperor 
public  officials,  choosing  them  usually  from  among  the 
members  of  the  equestrian  order,  and  giving  them 
salaries  and  a  career.  The  most  important  equestrian 
officials  were  those  a  lihellis,  who  formed  something 
comparable  to  a  general  imperial  secretariat,  those 
ah  epistulis,  ^  or  the  department  of  the  imperial  corre- 
spondence, and  those  a  rationihiis,  the  most  important 
of  all,  who  managed  the  finances  controlled  by  the 
emperor.^  Nor  did  he  limit  himself  to  reinforcing  in 
this  way  the  agents  under  the  control  of  the  emperor. 
In  order  to  make  good  the  defects  in  the  administra- 
tion of  the  republic  he  created  new  offices,  not  elective 
and  gratuitous  but  salaried  and  filled  by  the  emperor. 
Hadrian  seems  to  have  been  responsible  for  the  ap- 
pointment of  curatores  rernm  publicarum,  who  were 
charged  with  the  administration  of  cities  in  Italy  in 
cases  where  the  local  authorities  were  guilty  of  mal- 
administration. It  is  certain  that,  with  a  view  to 
improving  the  administration  in  Italy,  he  appointed 
four  iuridici  or  supreme  judges,  each  with  a  definite 
district,  but  this  most  important  office  could  only  be 
filled  by  men  of  consular  rank.^  His  predecessors  had 
already  had  a  consilium,  which  each  emperor  had 
filled  as  he  chose  with  his  most  trusted  friends,  which 
assisted  him  to  come  to  a  decision  whenever  he  thought 

'  [Hist.  Aug.]  Hadr.,  xxii.,  8. 

^  Cf.  Hirschfeld,  Untersuchungen  auf  dem  Gebiete  der  romischen 
Verwaltung,  Berlin,  1876,  p.  32. 

3  [Hist.  Aug.]  Hadr.,  xxii.,  13.  It  is  not  clear  whether  they  were 
already  known  as  iuridici  under  Hadrian,  or  whether  they  were 
given  this  name  when  re-established  by  Marcus  Aurelius. 


Judicial  Reforms  289 

proper  to  consult  it,  but  which  had  never  had  any 
official  character.  Under  Hadrian  this  council  from 
being  a  gathering  of  private  friends  became  a  public 
body.  Its  members  were  no  longer  to  be  chosen 
merely  by  the  emperor,  but  had  to  be  approved  by  the 
senate.  They  received  a  salary  and  were  required  to 
possess  certain  qualifications.  One  of  the  most  prized 
of  these  was  a  knowledge  of  jurisprudence.'  Finally 
it  appears  that  under  Hadrian  the  praetorian  prsefects 
began  to  assume  judicial  functions  and  to  decide  civil 
cases  on  appeal  from  decisions  of  the  proconsuls  in  the 
provinces. 

91.  Judicial  Reforms.  Hadrian,  therefore,  at- 
tempted to  combine  the  oriental  bureaucratic  principle 
of  paid  permanent  officials  controlled  by  the  emperor 
with  the  aristocratic  principle  of  the  republic  which 
required  that  only  senators  and  knights  should  have  z. 
right  to  participate  in  the  government  of  the  empire. 
That  is  to  say  he  set  up  a  paid  bureaucracy,  directly 
dependent  on  himself,  but  reserved  all  the  appoint- 
ments for  members  of  the  two  privileged  orders  in  the 
State.  In  substance  the  reform  rather  limited  than 
enlarged  the  powers  of  the  emperor.  All  historians, 
in  fact,  admit  that  under  Hadrian  the  occult  power  t 
favourites,  of  freedmen,  or  of  women  was  a  thing 
unknown.  It  is  therefore  natural  to  find  side  by  side 
with  the  oriental  and  bureaucratic  principle  the 
beginnings,  especially  in  the  organization  of  the 
consilium   principis,   of   the  democratic  principle  of 

»  [Hist.  Aug.]  Hadr.,  xviii.,  i.  On  the  consilium  principis  may- 
be consulted  E.  Cuq,  Mtmoire  sur  le  consilium  principis  d'Au- 
guste  a  Diocletien,  in  Memoires  presentees  par  divers  savants  d 
I'Acaderiie  des  inscriptions  ei  des  lettres  de  I'Institut  de  France, 
Pari.'^,  1884,  vol.  ix. 
VOL.  II — 19 


290  Hadrian,  the  Great  Reformer 

individual  capacity  recognized  in  the  form  of  legal 
knowledge.  That  this  form  of  ability  should  have 
been  the  first,  and  perhaps  the  only,  form  admitted  by 
Hadrian  is  a  fact  worthy  of  notice  because  it  throws 
light  on  another  side  of  his  government.  Hadrian  was 
a  "juristic"  emperor;  with  him  begins  in  the  empire  the 
epoch  of  the  jurists  and  the  great  attempt  to  substitute 
for  traditional  and  case  law  a  reasoned  system  of 
jurisprudence.  Hadrian  introduced  many  novelties 
into  the  law  as  then  in  force, '  but  his  greatest  achieve- 
ment in  this  field  was  the  edictum  perpetuum,  whereby 
for  the  first  time  an  attempt  was  made  to  codify  the 
Roman  law.  Hitherto  at  Rome  the  sources  of  what 
we  call  civil  law  had  been  various.  There  had  been 
laws  passed  by  the  people  and  senatus  consulta  by  the 
senate,  while  the  various  magistrates,  in  virtue  of 
their  power  to  supplement  law  by  making  rules  which 
had  to  be  obeyed  as  if  they  actually  were  laws,  had 
from  time  to  time  issued  edicts  or  interdicta.  The 
injunction  of  an  American  judge  may  be  referred  to 
as  a  modern  parallel  which  gives  some  idea  of  the 
nature  and  working  of  the  Roman  interdicta. 

In  civil  law,  the  most  important  edicts  had  always 
been  those  of  the  praetors,  who  had  thereby  been  able 
to  fill  the  gaps  in  the  laws  and  senatus  consulta  by 
means  of  their  rules  in  particular  cases  which  had  not 
been  contemplated  by  the  law.  Like  the  English 
chancellor,  the  Roman  city  praetor  could  not  theoret- 
ically make  law,  but  he  could  (and  did)  provide  new 
remedies.  These  were  of  three  kinds:  New  actions, 
exceptions  (new  defences),  and  interdicta  (injunctions). 

Unlike   the   chancellor,   the  praetor  announced  in 

'  These  reforms  are  enumerated  in  Duruy,  Histoire  des  Ro- 
mains,  Paris,  1883,  vol.  v.,  pp.  113  flf. 


Hadrians  Travels  291 

assuming  office  what  remedies  unknown  to  the  civil 
(=  common)  law  he  proposed  to  give,  and  this 
programme  was  set  forth  in  his  edictutn. 

He  usuall}^  (and  in  the  later  times  invariably)  re- 
published the  edicts  of  his  predecessor  with  such 
variations  or  additions  as  were  suggested  by  the 
jurists  whom  he  had  drawn  into  his  council.  In  this 
way,  the  Roman  began  to  speak  of  the  edictutn  tralati- 
cium — the  "handed  along"  edict. 

The  development  of  this  new  body  of  law  came  to 
an  end,  practically,  at  about  the  beginning  of  the 
Christian  era,  just  as  the  development  of  English 
equity  practically  came  to  an  end  at  the  close  of  the 
eighteenth  century. 

In  the  early  empire,  the  chief  agency  of  legal 
reform  was  the  Senatus  consuUum,  which  in  the  time 
of  Tiberius  wholly  replaced  legislation  by  the  assembly; 
just  as  in  England  the  chief  agency  of  progress  in  the 
nineteenth  century  was  the  act  of  Parliament.  The 
edict  had  long  before  the  time  of  Hadrian  become 
practically  perpetuum  and  was  so  described.  Hadrian 
charged  Salonius  Julianus,  an  African  who  was  one 
of  the  best  jurists  of  the  time,  with  the  duty  of  collect- 
ing and  arranging  in  the  edictiim  perpetuum  the  series 
of  edicts  which  could  still  be  of  use  as  rules  of  law  and 
to  edit  these  in  an  authoritative  and  final  text,  and 
in  131  the  senate  was  asked  to  approve  this  collec- 
tion and  to  give  to  it  formally  the  force  of  law. 

92.  Hadrian's  Travels.  The  First  Series  of  Jour- 
neys, in  the  Western  Provinces  and  Africa  (i  19-122 
A.D.).  Hadrian's  policy  explains  why  he  was  the 
first  emperor  who  spent  the  greater  part  of  his  time 
in  travelling  in  the  provinces.  A  certain  nervous 
restlessness,  his  insatiable  curiosity,  and  his  desire  to 


292  Hadrian,  the  Great  Reformer 

see  and  know  everything  may  have  helped  to  impel 
him  to  these  incessant  peregrinations,  but  with  these 
motives  was  associated  a  lofty  political  idea  and  an 
important  reason  of  State.  This  man  who  understood 
and  admired  at  the  same  time  both  the  Roman  and 
the  Greek  genius  could  not  limit  his  activity  to  Rome 
and  Italy.  He  was  bound  to  extend  it  to  the  provinces, 
which  were  now  the  strength  of  the  empire  since  they 
supplied  most  of  the  money,  most  of  the  soldiers,  and 
most  of  the  new  families  of  the  senatorial,  and  eques- 
trian aristocracy.  His  travels  were,  so  to  speak, 
journeys  of  inspection  made  in  order  to  supervise  civil 
and  military  administration  in  every  part  of  the  em- 
pire and  to  promote  everywhere  the  development, 
the  embellishment,  and  the  progress  of  cities.  For 
Hadrian  was  also  the  greatest  builder  of  cities  that 
ever  governed  the  empire  and  the  prince  who  had  their 
extension  and  adornment  most  at  heart.  Since  the 
chronology  of  these  voyages  can  be  conjectured  with 
at  least  a  certain  probability  we  propose  to  relate 
them  one  after  the  other  in  the  order  which  seems 
most  likely,  taking  the  opportunity  of  giving  a  short 
description  of  the  provinces  at  this,  the  most  pros- 
perous moment  in  the  history  of  the  empire.^ 

Hadrian  began  his  travels  in  119  with  a  journey 
which  took  him  in  the  first  instance  to  Gaul.  Gaul 
had  followed  the  path  of  Romanization  which  had 
been  opened  to  her  in  the  age  of  Augustus.  Not  only 
did  she  furnish  Italy  with  excellent  agricultural  and 
mineral  products  such  as  timber,  skins,  cattle,  cheese, 

'  The  chronology  of  Hadrian's  journeys  is  very  uncertain. 
A  special  study  of  the  subject,  the  conclusions  of  which,  however, 
are  not  always  acceptable,  is  given  by  Diirr,  Die  Reisen  dcs  Kaiser 
Hadrian,  Wien,  1881 


Hadrian  s  Travels  293 

ham,  salt  fish,  iron,  copper,  and  lead,  not  only  did  she 
supply  to  Italy  and  export  to  Germany  manufactured 
articles, — for  the  most  part  rather  rough  imitations 
of  oriental  products, — glass  and  pottery,  linen  and 
woollen  stuffs,  clothes  for  the  lower  classes;  but  she 
also  sent  loyal  legions,  generals,  and  statesmen  for  the 
service  of  the  empire.  The  country  which  Caesar  had 
conquered  now  boasted  great  cities,  such  as  Lugdunum 
(Lyons),  Vienna  (Vienne),  Massilia  (Marseilles), 
Narbo  (Narbonne),  Tolosa  (Toulouse),  Burdigala 
(Bordeaux),  which  were  rich  in  palaces,  monuments, 
theatres,  baths,  villas,  libraries,  and  flourishing  schools. 
In  these  cities  trade  and  industry  were  very  active, 
the  most  important  industries  being  the  manufacture 
of  glass,  pottery,  and  textiles,  shipbuilding,  the  making 
of  purple,  armour,  and  metal  work.  As  in  Italy  the 
towns  were  invaded  by  the  most  various  Greek  and 
oriental  influences.  At  Lyons  even  Christianity  was 
beginning  to  gain  a  foothold.  What  Hadrian  did  for 
Gaul  during  his  first  journey  we  do  not  precisely  know, 
for  it  is  difficult  to  distinguish  his  first  acts  from  those 
which  must  be  referred  to  a  later  period.  But,  how- 
ever this  may  be,  one  of  his  biographers  bears  witness 
that  in  the  course  of  this  journey  "he  aided  all  men 
by  his  liberality,"  and  a  significant  comment  on  this 
assertion  is  to  be  found  in  the  legend  on  certain  coins 
struck  for  the  occasion  which  celebrates  Hadrian  as 
the  "Restorer  of  Gaul. '" 

From  Gaul  Hadrian  went  to  Germany  where,  both 
in  the  upper  and  the  lower  provinces,  Roman  ideas 
were  making  progress.  The  fortresses  which  had  been 
built  for  the  defence  of  the  frontier  were  gradually 
developing  into  little  cities  and  were  becoming  centres 

■  Cohen,  Monnaies,  Hadrien,  1065,  1067. 


294  Hadrian,  the  Great  Reformer 

of  an  active  trade  between  the  semi-savage  popula- 
tions of  independent  Germany  and  the  more  civilized 
provinces  of  the  empire.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that 
in  this  province  the  inspection  carried  out  by  the 
prince  had  above  all  a  military  character.  Hadrian 
restored  the  discipline  of  the  armies  which  he  found 
somewhat  relaxed,  improved  the  system  of  training 
and  the  service  generally,  and  perhaps  gave  a  new 
impulse  to  the  construction  of  the  limes. 

From  Germany  Hadrian  crossed  to  Britain.  Roman 
civilization  was  penetrating  even  this  most  recent 
conquest,  more  especially  in  the  south.  Latin  was 
beginning  to  be  spoken  and  teachers  of  rhetoric  were 
in  request  for  Latin  and  even  for  Greek  studies. 
Trade  with  the  empire  was  developing.  Britain 
exported  slaves,  corn,  cattle,  pelts,  leather,  and  fish, 
and  was  beginning  to  exploit  her  mines  of  tin,  cop- 
per, and  silver  which  had  long  been  known  to  the 
Phoenicians,  thus  offering  many  occasions  of  profit 
to  speculators  from  more  civilized  countries.  The 
conquest  was  however  so  recent  and  the  tribes  still 
so  incompletely  subdued  that  Britain  could  not  yet 
produce  much  revenue,  and  the  country  was  accord- 
ingly regarded  at  Rome  as  a  passive  province.^  Ha- 
drian, therefore,  having,  after  some  fighting,  struck 
terror  into  the  mountaineers  of  the  north,  decided 
to  rectify  the  frontier  here  as  he  had  done  in  the  East 
by  drawing  it  back  to  a  more  easily  defensible  line. 
This  was  the  line  from  the  Solway  Firth  to  the  mouth 
of  the  Tyne,  on  which  he  built  the  famous  Vallum 
Hadriani,  of  which  the  superb  ruins  remain  to  this 
day. 

In  the  winter  of  1 21-122  the  emperor  was  in  Spain. 

'  App.,  Proem,  5. 


Hadrian  s  Travels  295 

Spain  was  no  longer  the  barbaric  province  against 
which  the  republic  had  had  to  carry  on  a  sanguinary- 
struggle  for  centuries.  The  ancient  Celtic  and  Iberian 
languages  and  customs  had  practically  disappeared. 
Latin  alone  was  spoken.  The  worship  of  the  emperor 
was  at  its  height.  There  was  an  intense  municipal 
life  in  its  flourishing  cities  such  as  Tarraco  (Tarragona), 
Corduba  (Cordova),  Nova  Carthago  (Cartagena), 
Italica  (Old  Seville),  Salmantica  (Salamanca),  Ceesar- 
augusta  (Saragossa),  Augusta  Emerita  (Merida), 
which  were  all  rich  in  temples,  amphitheatres,  and 
fine  streets,  and  all  resembled  the  cities  of  Italy  in 
being  full  of  the  most  varied  manifestations,  of 
spiritual  life  and  in  possessing  centres  of  study,  of 
pleasure,  and  of  busy  labour.  The  most  flourishing 
industries  were  agriculture  and  mining,  and  among 
the  products  by  which  Spain  was  enriched  the  most 
important  were  cereals,  oil,  and  wine  which  was  ex- 
ported and  sold  even  to  the  Rhine  countries,  silver, 
gold,  and  copper,  which  here  also  had  been  first  dis- 
covered by  the  Phoenicians.  There  was  a  corre- 
sponding commercial  activity  which  was  favoured 
by  the  system  of  roads,  harbours,  great  markets, 
and  numerous  urban  centres.  We  know  little  of 
what  Hadrian  did  in  Spain.  Here  also  he  received 
the  title  of  Restorer,'  but  it  appears  that  he  did 
not  stay  long  in  the  country,  as  an  insurrection 
among  the  Mauri  compelled  him  to  go  to  Africa  in 
the  spring  of  122. 

Africa  also  had  developed  marvellously  during  a 
century  of  peace.  Except  for  Mauretania,  the  ancient 
realm  of  Juba  which  had  remained  barbaroiis  and 

'  [Hist.  Aug.]  Hadr.,  xii.,  3-4;  Cohen,  op.  cit.,  Hadnen,  1069- 
1075- 


296  Hadrian,  the  Great  Reformer 

rebellious,  the  country  had  grown  rich  by  agriculture, 
mining,  and  industry  of  all  kinds.  It  supplied  Rome, 
Italy,  and  all  the  empire  with  wild  beasts  for  the  arena, 
ivory,  precious  marbles,  grain,  oil,  perfimies,  and 
costly  stuffs.  Carthage  had  become  once  more  a 
great  and  flourishing  city,  and  many  smaller  towns 
had  grown  up  which  by  their  architecture  and  their 
manners  reminded  the  visitor  of  the  cities  of  Italy. 
But  the  Numidians,  the  Lybians,  the  Lybophcenicians, 
and  in  general  the  lower  class  in  the  cities,  and  the 
agricultural  labourers  in  the  country,  had  continued 
to  speak  the  local  dialect  and  still  preserved  their 
confused  and  violent  indigenous  religions.  The  upper 
classes,  on  the  other  hand,  spoke,  wrote,  and  studied 
Latin  as  in  Gaul  and  Spain,  and  had  already  fur- 
nished several  families  to  the  senatorial  aristocracy. 
The  Romanization  of  Africa,  however,  was  not  so 
complete  as  that  of  Gaul  and  Spain,  and  certain  local 
elements  proved  too  strong  to  be  assimilated. 

In  Africa  as  in  Britain  Hadrian  had  to  occupy 
himself  chiefly  with  military  matters.  In  addition 
to  a  vigorous  offensive  campaign  in  the  Atlas  he  ap- 
pears to  have  taken  in  hand  a  series  of  fortifications 
which  are  strongly  reminiscent  of  the  British  vallum. 
In  this  case,  however,  the  principal  defensive  system 
was  not  an  artificial  rampart  but  an  actual  mountain 
chain.  Here  also  he  loaded  the  cities  of  the  various 
provinces  with  benefactions,  and  once  again  received 
the  title  of  Restorer. 

93.  Hadrian's  First  Journey  to  the  Oriental  Pro- 
vinces. From  Africa  Hadrian  crossed  Egypt  and 
went  to  the  East  to  which  he  seems  to  have  been  called 
by  the  threat  of  a  new  war  with  Parthia.  An  accom- 
modation with  Chosroes,  however,  averted  this  danger, 


Hadrian  s  Journey  to  Oriental  Provinces  297 

and  peaceful  relations  with  the  Parthians  were  re- 
established. 

Hadrian  could  now  visit  in  peace  and  quietness 
Asia  and  Greece,  the  two  countries  to  which  he  was 
naturally  most  attached.  He  had  known  the  East  as 
a  soldier  under  the  command  of  Trajan.  He  was  now 
returning  thither  in  more  tranquil  times  not  merely, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  occidental  provinces,  in  order  to 
provide  for  the  needs  of  the  empire,  but  also  to  satisfy 
his  insatiable  intellectual  curiosity.  With  what  ad- 
miration must  the  soldier  who  knew  Greek  better 
than  Latin,  who  not  only  loved  Hellenic  and  Hellenis- 
tic art  but  wished  to  be  himself  an  artist,  have  con- 
templated the  work  done  by  the  empire  in  all  Asia 
Minor!  Here  were  the  richest,  the  most  industrious, 
the  most  cultivated,  the  most  populous  of  all  the 
provinces.  Here  Romanization  had  made  little  pro- 
gress, except  perhaps  in  the  countries  of  the  interior 
and  among  the  groups  of  colonists  who  had  come  from 
the  West.  The  Greek  language  reigned  supreme;  the 
imperial  edicts  were  published  in  Greek;  Greek  was 
the  language  of  the  courts  of  jiistice.  Yet  even  in 
these  provinces  the  influence  of  the  metropolis  made 
itself  felt.  Italian  merchants  were  numerous  in  the 
principal  cities.  Roman  law  was  insinuating  itself 
among  the  varieties  of  the  local  codes.  Numerous 
Asiatics  were  acquiring  Roman  citizenship,  and 
architecture  in  the  construction  of  baths,  aqueducts, 
bridges,  and  amphitheatres  was  acquiring  a  partially 
Roman  character. 

Few  countries  in  the  world  could  then  compete  with 
Asia  Minor  in  the  variety  of  their  productions.  In  the 
interior  there  were  splendid  forests  and  fertile  plains 
covered  with  grain ;  stock  rearing  prospered,  and  timber 


298  Hadrian,  the  Great  Reformer 

in  abundance  was  exported  by  sea.  Phrygian  and 
Galatian  wool  formed  the  material  of  an  extremely 
active  trade  and  industry.  The  cities  of  the  south-em 
and  western  coasts  from  Cilicia  to  the  Hellespont 
were  flourishing  centres  of  manufacture,  more  es- 
pecially of  textiles.  These  manufactures  prospered 
greatly  because  they  found  new  and  valuable  markets 
throughout  the  vast  empire  which  was  now  entirely 
open  to  them,  and  accordingly  they  rapidly  developed 
even  in  some  of  the  districts  of  the  interior,  for  example 
in  Cappadocia,  where  they  were  particularly  stimu- 
lated by  the  exertions  of  the  Semitic  element  in  the 
population.  It  was  a  strange  country  in  which 
Hellenism  had  been  superimposed  on  the  varieties  of 
national  traditions  and  customs,  and  where  the  Roman 
spirit  had  joined  itself  to  Hellenism.  Through  all  this 
complexity,  however,  Asia  Minor  preserved  an  orien- 
tal character  under  its  Hellenistic  veneer.  Its  litera- 
ture was  characterized  by  the  softness,  the  fantasy, 
the  verbosity,  and  the  frivolity  of  Asia.  Its  religion 
was  a  chaotic  miscellany  of  Greek  mythology,  and  of 
.^gypto-Phoenician,  Jewish,  and  Christian  cults,  while 
there  was  also  an  admixture  of  purely  Asiatic  religions, 
such  as  those  of  Mithras,  Cybele,  and  Attis. 

In  these  provinces  Hadrian  stayed  some  months, 
but  he  returned  on  subsequent  occasions  for  longer 
periods  and  there  were  few  places  which  did  not  retain 
the  traces  of  his  passage  and  his  plans.  Cities  de- 
stroyed by  earthquakes  were  restored  from  their  ruins ; 
others  which  were  needy  or  shabby  were  succoured  or 
embellished;  and  great  harbours,  roads,  and  other 
monuments  of  public  utility  rose  out  of  nothing, 
encouraged  by  his  help  and  advice. 

In  the  spring  of  1 23  the  emperor  crossed  the  .^gean. 


Hadrian' s  Journey  to  Oriental  Provinces  299 

where  the  Cyclades  were  now  for  the  most  part  scenes 
of  ruin  and  abandonment,  and  reached  Greece,  where 
he  intended  to  make  a  long  stay.  Greece,  alas,  was 
no  longer  the  Greece  of  Pericles  or  Demosthenes. 
Even  the  peace  imposed  by  the  empire  had  helped 
her  less  than  other  provinces,  which  were  naturally 
richer  or  better  situated.  The  population  was  sparse; 
many  districts  were  either  abandoned  or  infested  with 
brigandage.  Only  the  maritime  cities  and  a  few  inland 
towns  which  were  situated  on  busy  trade  routes  had 
regained  something  of  their  ancient  splendour  or 
acquired  new  prosperity.  Such  were  Thessalonica, 
Philippi,  Nicopolis,  Mantinea,  and  above  all  the 
restored  Corinth,  which  was  the  capital  of  Roman 
Greece.  As  for  Athens,  it  was  now  a  flourishing 
centre  of  study  to  which  rich  youths  were  sent  from  all 
parts  of  the  empire.  Yet  for  the  city  which  had  seen 
.^schylus,  Sophocles,  Thucydides,  Pericles,  Socrates, 
Phidias,  Plato,  and  Demosthenes  within  its  walls,  it 
was  a  great  fall  to  be  reduced  to  the  status  of  a  mere 
university  town! 

Hadrian  stayed  long  in  Greece  (123-126)  and  spared 
neither  pains  nor  expense  in  his  endeavour  to  benefit 
the  country.  At  Corinth  he  built  baths  in  several 
quarters  of  the  city,  and  an  aqueduct  to  bring  water 
from  Lake  Stymphalos.  At  Nemea  he  constructed  a 
hippodrome,  at  Mantinea  a  temple  to  Neptune,  at 
Argos  he  offered  in  the  temple  of  Juno  the  favourite 
bird  of  the  goddess,  a  golden  peacock  whose  tail 
blazed  with  precious  stones.  He  encouraged  the 
resumption  of  horse  races  at  the  Nemean  Games  and 
improved  the  narrow  and  dangerous  road  on  the 
Isthmus  between  Corinth  and  Megara.  Athens, 
however,  was  the  chief  object  of  his  care.     It  was 


300  Hadrian,  the  Great  Reformer 

apparently  his  wish  to  revive  in  fancy  the  bygone  age 
of  Miltiades  and  Isocrates.  He  assumed  the  Greek 
dress,  became  an  Athenian  citizen,  and  served  the 
offices  of  Archon  and  Agonothetes.  Every  day  he 
discussed  with  architects  and  sculptors  the  plans  of 
the  buildings  with  which  he  meant  to  adorn  the  city. 
With  the  philosophers,  whose  schools  he  freed  from  the 
shackles  imposed  by  Vespasian,  he  talked  of  their  teach- 
ings, with  the  learned  of  the  memories  of  the  past. 
The  Athenians  of  the  second  century  saw  gradually 
rising  in  honour  of  Hadrian  a  new  town  in  the  plain 
of  the  Ilissus  over  against  the  ancient  city  of  Theseus, 
a  Hadrianopolis  adorned  by  countless  monuments  in 
which  were  concentrated  all  the  beauties  of  a  less  severe 
but  more  grandiose  art.  Here  the  Greeks  were  to  erect 
a  Panhellenion,  a  temple  to  Jupiter  and  Hadrian,  near 
which  games  were  periodically  to  be  celebrated  in  the 
presence  of  an  audience  collected  from  all  Greece. 

94.  Hadrian  and  Christianity.  It  seems  to  have 
been  in  Athens  that  Hadrian  wrote  his  famous  letter 
to  Minucius  Fundanius,  which  concerns  the  Chris- 
tians. It  was  in  more  general  terms  than  the  letter 
of  Trajan  to  Pliny,  and  the  emperor  did  not  lay  down 
that  Christians  were  to  be  condemned  if  they  refused 
to  worship  the  images  of  the  emperor.  He  said  that 
they  should  be  condemned  only  if  they  were  convicted 
of  having  done  something  against  the  law,  and  he 
strongly  urged  his  correspondent  not  to  listen  to 
unfounded  charges  and  calumnies  due  to  hatred. 
Milder  than  Trajan's  rescript,  Hadrian's  letter  is 
even  more  decided  in  confirming  the  Christians  in  their 
right  to  the  protection  of  the  imperial  authorities 
against  the  fanaticism  of  their  enemies.^ 

■  Justin,,  ApoL,  i.,  68;  Euseb.,  H.  EccL,  iv.,  9. 


Hadrian  s  Return  to  Rome  301 

95.  Hadrian's  Return  to  Rome  (126-128  A.D.)i 
and  his  Great  Buildings.     Towards  the  end  of  126 

Hadrian  came  back  to  Rome  and  his  capital  also 
received  its  share  of  his  attention.  At  Rome  also, 
though  he  gave  his  mind  to  every  branch  of  the  ad- 
ministration, he  laboured  chiefly  to  adorn  the  city 
with  new  monuments  and  new  institutions.  He  com- 
menced the  construction  of  the  splendid  temple  of 
Venus  and  Rome  near  the  Flavian  Amphitheatre  and 
put  in  hand  the  gigantic  mausoleum  for  himself  and  his 
successors,  the  ruins  of  which  now  form  the  castle  of 
S.  Angelo.  At  Tibur  (Tivoli)  he  planned  for  himself 
a  splendid  villa  in  which  were  to  be  reproduced  the 
most  splendid  buildings  in  the  empire  which  he  had 
seen  during  his  travels.  It  was  probably  in  these  years 
that  he  founded  on  the  Capitol  the  Athenseiun,  which 
was  to  be  the  first  great  public  institution  in  the 
capital  of  the  empire  for  the  teaching  of  philosophy, 
rhetoric,  and  jurisprudence,  and  which  contained  pub- 
lic reading  rooms  and  lecture  halls.  The  companies  of 
lyric  and  dramatic  poets  the  so-called  synodi  dionysiaci, 
the  Pythian  and  Olympian  competitions  under  the 
patronage  of  the  emperor,  were  in  universal  favour; 
suitable  schools  of  music  were  established  and  musi- 
cians and  artists  were  much  more  largely  recompensed 
than  in  previous  times.  ^ 

96.  Hadrian's  Travels.  Second  Series  (i 28-131 
A.D.).  On  this  occasion  Hadrian  stayed  only  two 
years  at  Rome  and  early  in  July,  128,  he  was  again 
in  Africa  at  the  camp  of  Lambassis,  where  he  made 
a  speech  to  his  soldiers  of  which  some  fragments  are 

'  C.  Barbagallo,  Lo  stato  e  Vistruzione  pubblica,  pp.  167  S.  and 
the  sources  there  cited. 


302  Hadrian,  the  Great  Reformer 

still  preserved.'  Thence  he  returned  to  his  favour- 
ite Greece  and  afterwards  continued  his  journey  to 
Asia  on  his  way  to  Syria  and  Egypt. 

Hellenism  had  penetrated  western  Syria  very  early 
but  the  country  still  seemed  to  have  inherited  much 
more  of  the  Phoenician  than  of  the  Greek  civilization. 
The  people  had  remained  Syrian  in  character  and 
spoke  the  local  dialects;  the  industries  which 
made  the  prosperity  of  the  country  and  for  which  it 
was  still  famous  were  as  of  old  the  Phoenician  manu- 
factures of  wool,  silk,  purple,  and  glass.  The  Syrians, 
who  were  very  skilful  traders,  imported  their  raw 
materials  from  China  and  India  and  exported  them 
either  raw  or  manufactured  to  Italy,  Gaul,  and  Britain. 
Life  there  was  easy,  opulent  and  active,  sensual  and 
refined,  and  pleasures  were  plentiful.  Antioch  seems 
to  have  been  the  first  ancient  city  which  illuminated 
its  streets  by  night,  and  all  the  Syrian  towns  were 
celebrated  for  the  ease  and  pleasantness  of  their  ways 
of  life.  The  country  was  full  of  Hebrews  who  had 
emigrated  after  the  fall  of  Jerusalem  and  lived  apart, 
encamped,  as  it  were,  in  the  country  of  their  enemies. 

From  Western  Syria  Hadrian  passed  to  the  more 
easterly  part  of  the  country.  Here  the  scene  was 
changed.  There  were  no  more  industrial  cities  or 
lands  under  intensive  cultivation ;  the  scenery  was  for 
the  most  part  rude  and  even  wild,  and  the  country  was 
infested  with  brigands.  The  Roman  conquest,  how- 
ever, had,  as  time  went  on,  effected  many  changes. 
One  immediate  result  had  been  the  immigration  of  a 
numerous  Semitic  population  bringing  with  them  in- 
to these  regions  a  more  thoroughgoing  form  of  agri- 
culture and  the  first  elements  of  urban  civilization, 

'  C.  I.  L.,  viii.,  SuppL,  18,042. 


Hadrian  s  Travels  303 

whereby  the  deserts  were  already  beginning  to  be 
crossed  by  main  roads  and  aqueducts,  and  towns  were 
growing  up  out  of  nothing  as  if  by  magic.  The  most 
distant  city  to  be  visited  by  Hadrian  in  this  district 
was  Palmyra,  and  Palmyra  like  the  rest  received  a 
gift  of  magnificent  buildings,  and  was  raised  to  the 
rank  of  a  colony. 

The  emperor  then  visited  the  new  province  of 
Arabia.  Here  also  the  upper  classes  mught  be  regarded 
as  Graecized,  and  the  growing  immigration  from 
the  interior  and  the  complete  awakening  of  their 
material  and  spiritual  life  demonstrated  how  much 
they  had  benefited  by  the  imperial  rule.  Hadrian's 
chief  task  was  to  provide  a  system  of  roads,  and  having 
done  so  he  received  the  reward  of  his  statesmanship. 
The  province  struck  medals  in  honour  of  the  Restorer 
of  Arabia,  and  Petra,  its  capital,  assumed  his  name.' 

From  Arabia  Hadrian  proceeded  to  Egypt.  The 
land  of  the  Pyramids  and  of  the  ancient  hieroglyphs 
was  no  longer  the  country  of  lonely  temples  excavated 
in  the  rock  and  adorned  with  colossal  pillars  and  the 
monstrous  countenances  of  sacred  animals.  After  its 
conquest  by  Alexander,  Egypt  had  become  a  kind  of 
busy  Cosmopolis,  rich  and  always  restless,  where  all 
the  elements  of  the  Mediterranean  world  were  mingled. 
Such  it  had  remained  under  the  empire.  There 
Romans,  Egyptians,  Greeks,  Hebrews,  and  Asiatics 
of  all  languages  and  races  met  together.  The  villages 
and  the  country  districts  remained  irreconcilably 
Egyptian,  while  the  large  towns  were  Greek,  the  ruling 
classes  Greek  with  a  Roman  infiltration,  and  among 
all  these  there  was  a  clash  of  opposing  tendencies,  reli- 
gions, passions,  and  social  prejudices.     It  was  a  scene 

'  Cohen,  op.  cit.,  Hadr.,  1057. 


304  Hadrian,  the  Great  Reformer 

of  intense  activity.  The  population  was  extremely 
dense;  property  was  much  subdivided;  there  was  a 
complicated  bureaucratic  system;  the  minds  of  the 
people  were  full  of  unrest,  prone  to  mockery,  sarcasm, 
and  sedition,  but,  above  all  things,  greedy  of  gain. 

Hadrian,  the  serene  Greek  prince,  did  not  love  this 
second  Antioch.  He  busied  himself  with  the  local 
educational  institutions,  especially  with  the  Museum, 
and  conversed  with  their  teachers.  But  some  years 
later  he  wrote  to  one  of  his  friends:  "You  praise  the 
Egyptians.  I  know  them  as  an  unstable  and  frivolous 
people,  prone  to  be  excited  by  the  most  trivial  rumour. 
They  are  a  most  seditious,  vain,  and  insolent  race. 
Their  capital  is  rich;  everything  abounds  there  and 
everything  nourishes  its  prosperity.  No  one  is  idle. 
Some  work  at  glass  making,  others  make  paper  or 
weave  linen.  Every  man  has  a  trade — the  halt,  the 
lame,  and  the  blind  all  work.  But  the  one  god  they 
worship,  Christians,  Jews,  and  all  alike,  is  money.  .  .  . 
It  is  much  to  be  desired  that  the  manners  and  customs 
of  this  great  city  should  be  more  in  harmony  with  its 
great  position  as  the  capital  of  Egypt.  "' 

97.  The  Renewed  Insurrection  in  Judaea  (132-135 
A.D.).  About  the  end  of  131  Hadrian  was  again  in 
Rome,  where  he  consecrated  the  newly  completed 
temple  of  Venus  and  Rome.  In  the  same  year,  as  we 
have  seen,  he  promulgated  the  edictum  perpetuum 
after  securing  its  approval  by  the  senate.  The  follow- 
ing year  was  disturbed  by  grave  events  in  the  East. 
During  his  most  recent  journey  Hadrian  had  ordered 
the  reconstruction  of  Jerusalem,  the  ruins  of  which 
appeared  to  an  emperor  so  much  attached  to  peace 
and  to  the  arts  to  be  a  relic  of  a  barbarous  age  that 

■  [Hist.  Aug.]  Saturn.,  8. 


Hadrian''  s  Last  Years  305 

should  be  effaced.  His  idea,  however,  had  been  that 
it  should  be  rebuilt  as  a  splendid  Grasco-Roman  city, 
symbolizing  in  Palestine  the  union  that  he  had  effected, 
there  as  elsewhere,  between  the  Greek  and  the  Roman 
genius.  To  the  Hebrews  this  appeared  to  be  the 
supreme  insult  to  their  race.  Was  the  sacred  city  of 
Judaism  to  be  transformed  into  a  Grasco-Roman 
metropolis  with  grandiose  buildings  and  pagan 
sanctuaries,  baths,  and  theatres,  and  to  assume  the 
sacrilegious  name  of  ^^lia  Capitolina?  There  was  a 
new  outburst  of  religious  fanaticism  and  the  Jews 
rebelled  under  the  leadership  of  a  popular  Messiah, 
a  certain  Simon  Barkokeba  or  Barcosiba  (Son  of  the 
Star)  (132). 

Hadrian,  with  less  insight  than  Nero,  did  not,  at 
first,  attach  much  importance  to  this  movement. 
But  in  132,  while  he  was  resuming  his  peregrinations 
through  the  oriental  provinces  of  the  empire,  beginning 
with  Greece,  Rome  was  losing  the  province  of  Judaea 
and  the  Roman  armies  sent  there  sustained  repeated 
and  serious  reverses.  It  was  necessary  in  the  end  to 
send,  thither  Sextus  Julius  Severus,  one  of  the  best 
Roman  generals,  who  had  already  distinguished  him- 
self in  Britain,  and  who  carried  on  the  war  with  im- 
placable severity.  It  is  said  that  he  tortured  the 
leaders  of  the  revolt  to  death,  that  he  destroyed  fifty 
fortresses  and  nearly  a  thousand  villages,  and  that  in 
the  war  there  perished  not  less  than  600,000  Jewish 
combatants!  (134).  It  was  not  until  after  this  carnage 
was  over  that  Hadrian  was  able  to  betake  himself  to 
Jerusalem  and  give  orders  for  the  resumption  of  the 
work  of  reconstruction. 

98.  Hadrian's  Last  Years  (135-138  A.D.).  This 
was  destined  to  be  the  end  of  the  great  emperor's 

VOL.  n — 20 


3o6  Hadrian,   the  Great  Reforiner 

journeys.  He  returned  to  Rome  for  the  last  time,  and 
divided  his  attention  during  his  final  years  between  his 
artistic  tastes  and  the  cares  of  State.  In  these  years 
he  completed  his  villa  at  Tibur — a  town  rather  than  a 
villa — which,  in  addition  to  a  wonderful  assemblage  of 
gardens,  fountains,  shady  groves,  porticos,  galleries, 
rotundas,  baths,  basilicas,  libraries,  theatres,  and 
temples  glowing  with  precious  marbles  and  metals, 
was  to  contain  miniature  reproductions  of  all  the 
finest  things  which  the  prince  had  admired.  *  But  the 
man  who,  like  Ulysses,  had  travelled  so  much  was 
now  overcome  by  a  weariness  of  life  which  was  perhaps 
aggravated  by  the  commencement  of  the  malady 
which  was  to  prove  fatal  to  him.  Feeling  that  his 
strength  was  declining,  he  understood  that,  like  Nerva 
and  Trajan,  he  must  think  of  his  successor  and  again 
apply  the  method  of  adoption,  that  ingenious  com- 
bination of  the  principles  of  selection  and  election 
whereby  the  senatorial  aristocracy  flattered  itself 
that  it  had  solved  the  tremendous  problem  of  the 
transmission  of  the  imperial  dignity.  Hadrian's  first 
choice,  for  reasons  unknown  to  us,  fell  on  L.  Ceionius 
Commodus  Verus,  a  wholly  unknown  personage.  But 
Verus  died  on  January  i,  138,  and  the  emperor  then 
adopted  T.  Aurelius  Fulvus  Antoninus,  who  asstimed 
the  name  of  T.  .^Elius  Hadrianus  Antoninus,  and  made 
him  his  colleague  in  the  empire,  with  the  tribunician 
power  and  the  imperium  proconsidare.  He  required 
Antoninus  to  adopt  the  son  of  the  Ceionius  Verus  who 
had  first  been  chosen  as  his  successor,  and  Marcus 
Annius  Verus,  a  youth  of  seventeen,  for  whom  Ha- 
drian had  a  great  affection  and  who  was  the  future 

'  On  Hadrian's  villa  at  Tivoli  cf.  Boissier,  Fromenades  archeo- 
logiques,  Paris,  1887,  PP-  202  fiF. 


Characteristics  of  Hadrian' s  Government    307 

Marcus  Aurelius.  We  do  not  know  for  what  reason 
Hadrian  insisted  on  this  adoption  which,  to  some 
extent,  limited  his  successor's  power  of  choosing  his 
own  successor.  Six  months  later  on,  July  10,  138,  the 
emperor  died  at  Baise. 

99.  Characteristics  of  Hadrian's  Government. 
We  know  that  on  Hadrian's  death  the  senate  for  a 
time  resolutely  opposed  his  successor's  proposal  that 
divine  honours  should  be  paid  to  his  memory,  that 
they  threatened  to  withhold  approval  from  his  acts, 
and  that  they  were  only  with  great  difficulty  induced 
to  desist  from  this  opposition.  This  fact,  no  less  than 
the  conspiracy  which  was  formed  immediately  after 
the  adoption  of  Verus,  proves  that  among  the  aristoc- 
racy there  was  a  current  of  opinion  strongly  averse 
to  the  person  and  policy  of  the  emperor,  though  this 
opposition  was  not  so  strong  as  that  directed  against 
almost  all  the  emperors  of  the  Julio-Claudian  house. 
The  reason  for  this  opposition  is  undoubtedly  to  be 
found  in  Hadrian's  attempt  to  reconcile  the  Greek 
and  the  Roman  spirit.  Ancient  Rome,  with  her 
military  spirit  and  her  pride  of  power,  was  jealous 
of  her  supremacy  and  in  the  renewed  traditionalist 
spirit  of  the  new  nobility  she  found  a  final  force  of 
resistance  to  this  Hellenistic  and  juristic  emperor, 
the  protector  of  the  provinces,  the  patron  of  art, 
literature,  and  philosophy.  His  long  absences  from 
Rome,  his  administrative  reforms,  his  literary  and 
artistic  leanings,  his  lavish  gifts  to  provincial  cities, 
his  enormous  building  operations,  his  passion  for 
adorning  the  empire  with  all  the  splendours  of  Hel- 
lenism, and,  finally,  his  cautious  foreign  policy,  and 
his  aversion  to  conquests,  offended  the  ancient  pre- 
judices which   still   survived  in  the   Roman  world. 


3o8  Hadrian,  the  Great  Reformer 

Moreover,  in  order  to  find  the  money  for  the  great 
expenses  of  his  government,  Hadrian  had  had  to  make 
the  machinery  of  taxation  more  efficient.  Though 
he  began  his  reign  by  remitting  arrears  of  taxes  he 
afterwards  appointed  an  advocatus  fisci  to  defend  the 
rights  of  the  imperial  treasury  against  the  subter- 
fuges of  the  individual  taxpayer.  Further,  the  de- 
velopment of  his  vast  endeavour  to  reconcile  so  many 
contrasting  elements  could  not  but  be  characterized 
by  contradictions,  gaps,  and  imperfections  in  which, 
as  always,  contemporaries  found  plenty  of  material 
for  grievances.  These  considerations  may  help  us  to 
understand  why  Hadrian's  government  had  so  many 
enemies  in  spite  of — and  perhaps  because  of — its 
merits.  But,  since  his  policy  corresponded  to  the 
needs  of  the  time  and  went  neither  too  fast  nor  too 
slow,  it  may  also  be  seen  why  this  opposition  was 
impotent  and,  though  it  hampered  the  emperor,  did 
not  succeed  in  spoiling  his  work. 

Hadrian  did  no  more  than  bring  to  perfection  the 
policy  begun  by  Vespasian  and  continued  by  Trajan. 
In  his  system  Rome  was  to  be  the  political  and 
military,  and  Hellenism  the  intellectual  and  moral, 
bond  of  union  between  all  the  peoples  subject  to  the 
empire.  While,  therefore,  he  did  his  best  to  perfect 
the  army  by  means  of  reforms,  some  of  which  became 
permanent,  he  promoted  the  increase  and  adornment 
of  cities.  These  cities,  the  magnificence  and  the 
pleasures  of  which  they  were  the  scene,  the  interests 
which  they  controlled,  and  the  opportunities  for 
making  money  offered  by  the  growth  of  so  many 
urban  communities,  were  now  the  chief  bonds  which 
kept  succeeding  generations  attached  to  the  unity 
of  the  empire.    An  immense  population  protected  by 


Characteristics  of  Hadrian's  Government    309 

well-defended  frontiers,  longing  more  and  more  to 
enjoy  the  advantages  of  flourishing  and  civilized  city- 
life — such  was  the  Roman  Empire  in  the  time  of 
Hadrian.  Its  prosperity  was  destined  to  last  as  long 
as  it  maintained  the  equilibrium  of  the  two  elements, 
the  Roman  which  provided  its  military  and  political 
strength,  and  the  Greek  on  which  the  prosperity  of  its 
city  life  was  based. 


CHAPTER   XII 

THE  CLIMAX  OF  PROSPERITY  AND  THE  BEGINNINGS  OF 

DECLINE — FROM  ANTONINUS  PIUS  TO  DIDIUS  JULIANUS 

(138-193  A.D.) 

100.  Antoninus  Pius  (138-161  A.D.).  Antoninus 
Pius  belonged  to  a  family  which  originally  came  from 
Gaul.  He  was  fifty-two  years  of  age,  had  been  con- 
sul, proconsul  of  Asia,  a  iuridicus  in  Italy,  and  a  mem- 
ber of  the  imperial  Council.  He  was  a  conscientious 
and  upright  man  and  fulfilled  with  unshakable  firmness 
his  duties  to  the  memory  of  his  father  by  preventing  the 
senate  from  venting  on  Hadrian's  memor}'-  the  hatred 
which  they  had  been  compelled  to  suppress  while 
he  was  alive.  The  attitude  adopted  by  the  senate  on 
this  question  was,  however,  a  hint  of  their  real  feel- 
ings, and  another  was  conveyed  by  a  new  inclination 
towards  imperial  expansion  and  a  tendency  to  demand 
a  return  to  the  policy  of  Trajan.  ^  Antoninus,  a  man  of 
mild,  equable,  and  conciliatory  temper,  distinguished 
rather  by  moral  qualities  than  by  energy  or  intellec- 
tual power,  quite  understood  these  hints  and  made  it 
his  aim  to  preserve  scrupulously  the  work  done  by 
Hadrian,  rather  than  to  continue  his  complex  and 

»  The  coins  struck  by  order  of  the  senate  in  139  reveal  a  tend- 
ency to  regard  Parthia  and  Scythia  as  Roman  provinces.  Cf. 
Cohen,  Monnaies  rom.,  ii.,  Anion.,  Nos.  701,  825. 

310 


Antoninus  Pitts  311 

indefatigable  activities,  seeking  at  the  same  time  to 
placate  by  opportune  concessions  the  hostility  preva- 
lent in  senatorial  circles. 

Such,  in  fact,  was  the  double  aim  pursued  by  Anto- 
ninus throughout  all  his  government.  The  grandiose 
achievement  of  Hadrian  was  left  practically  intact. 
The  concilium  principis,  the  organization  of  the  im- 
perial chancellery  and  of  the  advocatus  fisci,  the  mili- 
tary reforms,  the  religious  policy,  the  direction  of  social 
legislation  and  of  foreign  policy  were  maintained  as 
they  had  been  established  by  his  predecessor.  The 
only  new  institution  set  up  by  Hadrian  which  Anto- 
ninus abolished  was  that  of  the  Italian  iuridici.  But 
on  the  other  hand  he  gratified  the  senate  with  lavish 
compensations,  both  formal  and  constitutional.  He 
was  never  weary  of  repeating  that  towards  the  senate 
he  meant  to  behave  as  he  had  wished  the  emperors 
to  behave  to  him  when  he  was  himself  a  senator.  He 
pardoned  those  who  had  been  condemned  for  political 
offences  during  the  last  years  of  Hadrian's  life  and 
established  a  rule  of  unlimited  indulgence  towards 
those  who  conspired  against  him.  He  tempered  the 
exactions  of  the  fiscus,  reduced  the  taxes,  and,  in  147 
or  148,  even  went  so  far  as  to  renounce  solemnly  all  ar- 
rears of  taxation  for  the  three  preceding  lustres.  He 
did  his  best  to  make  men  forget  the  ardent  Hellenism 
of  his  predecessor  by  bringing  back  old  traditions  and 
the  ancient  republican  symbols  to  honour  at  Rome 
and  by  restoring  the  old  forms  of  the  state  religion. 
For  this,  like  Vespasian,  he  was  honoured  by  the  senate 
oh  insignem  erga  ccBrimonias  piihlicas  curam  ac  religi- 
onem^ 

In  him  Rome  saw,  instead  of  a  restless  monarch  like 

'  C.  /.  L.,  vi.,  looi. 


312  The  Beginnings  of  Decline 

Hadrian,  a  prince  who  hardly  ever  quitted  the  capital, 
whatever  might  happen  on  the  frontiers  of  the  empire. 
His  predecessor's  luxurious  mania  for  building  was 
checked.  In  every  branch  of  administration  Antoninus 
did  his  best  to  reduce  expenditure;  he  diminished  the 
salaries  lavished  by  Hadrian  on  artists,  particularly 
musicians,  though  he  was  generous,  on  the  con- 
trary, to  rhetoricians  and  philosophers.  He  avoided 
war  with  Parthia;  but,  notwithstanding  his  love  of 
peace  and  his  attachment  to  the  principles  laid  down 
by  Hadrian,  he  yielded  to  the  expansionist  party  so 
far  as  Britain  was  concerned,  and  reoccupied  the  fron- 
tier line  as  fixed  by  Agricola.  Thus,  when  he  died 
after  ruling  for  about  twenty-three  years  he  was 
sincerely  mourned  by  all  those  who  upheld  republican 
and  traditionalist  principles  at  Rome.  In  him  and  in 
Trajan  the  Roman  genius  irradiated  the  vast  empire 
with  its  last  sunset  splendours. 

Amid  the  glories  of  that  sunset,  however,  storm 
clouds  were  already  gathering.  The  emperor  who 
had  reduced  the  taxes  left  the  Roman  coinage  more 
depreciated  than  even  Trajan  had  done.  He  had 
increased  by  one  third  the  alloy  of  the  denarius  which 
was  a  state  of  matters  worse  than  had  obtained  in  the 
days  of  the  last  civil  war.  The  prince  who,  from  love 
of  Rome  and  deference  to  the  senate,  had  never  in- 
spected a  province  or  a  frontier,  died  in  ignorance  of 
what  the  barbarians  were  doing  beyond  the  Rhine, 
the  Danube,  or  the  Euphrates,  in  Africa,  or  in  Britain. 
He  left  the  army  impaired  by  a  prolonged  peace,  by 
the  laxity  which  had  followed  the  ceaseless  vigilance 
of  Hadrian's  supervision,  and  by  the  hasty  and  too 
numerous  enrolments  of  barbarians  turned  without 
consideration  into  Roman  citizens.     And  finally,  on 


Marcus  Aurelius,  Imperial  Philosopher  313 

every  frontier  he  left  the  defence  of  the  empire  weak- 
ened and  its  enemies  made  more  audacious  by  the 
remissness  of  his  policy. 

loi.  Marcus  Aurelius,  the  Imperial  Philosopher 
(161-180  A.D,).  As  we  have  already  seen,  the  elec- 
tion of  the  new  emperor  may  be  said  to  have  been  de- 
cided in  the  time  of  Hadrian.  He  had  willed  that 
Antoninus  should  adopt  as  his  sons  Marcus  Annius 
Verus  (who  then  styled  himself  Aurelius,  the  name  of 
his  adoptive  grandfather  Hadrian)  and  Lucius  the 
son  of  the  other  Verus  who  had  first  been  chosen  as 
the  successor  to  the  empire.  Marcus  Aurelius  had 
received  tribunician  and  proconsular  powers  in  146  and 
had  therefore  become  the  colleague  and  presumptive 
successor  of  Antoninus,  who  at  his  death  explicitly 
chose  him  as  such,  though  his  choice  as  emperor,  which 
events  proved  to  be  well  inspired,  ultimately  goes  back 
to  Hadrian.  On  the  death  of  Antoninus,  Marcus 
Aurelius,  mindful  of  Hadrian's  intentions,  appointed 
as  his  colleague  in  the  empire  his  adoptive  brother 
Lucius  .^lius  Verus  and  the  two  princes  presented 
themselves  jointly  to  the  senate,  the  praetorians,  and 
the  people. 

Marcus  was  a  passionate  student  of  philosophy,  and 
a  fervent  follov/er  of  the  Stoic  sect.  Philosophy  he 
understood  after  the  fashion  of  his  time  as  a  rule  of 
thought  and  action  and  not  merely  as  an  intellectual 
pursuit.  For  the  first  time  the  Roman  empire,  hith- 
erto governed  by  an  aristocracy  of  politicians  and 
soldiers,  had  for  its  head  a  philosopher  whose  highest 
ambition  was  to  realize  the  ethical  ideal  of  the  Stoic 
school.  Hellenic  intellectuahsm  had  never  won  a 
greater  triumph.  With  Marcus  Aurelius  the  phi- 
losophy which  Rome  had  more  or  less  distrusted  for 


314  T^he  Beginnings  of  Decline 

so  many  centuries  and  which  Vespasian  had  banished 
from  Italy,  rose  at  a  bound  to  the  government  not  of 
a  small  State  but  of  the  greatest  and  most  powerful 
empire  to  which  men  had  ever  yet  paid  homage. 
Plato  had  said  that  men  and  States  would  be  happy  on 
the  day  when  philosophers  became  rulers.  How  far 
did  Marcus  Aurelius  prove  or  disprove  the  bold  theory 
of  that  great  thinker? 

102.  The  Oriental  War  (161-166  A.D.).  The 
new  emperor's  trials  were  destined  to  be  serious,  for 
stormy  times  were  ahead.  Immediately  after  the 
death  of  Antoninus,  who  was  better  at  adroitly  post- 
poning than  at  dealing  firmly  with  difficulties,  the 
effects  of  his  polic}''  became  apparent.  In  Britain 
there  was  an  incursion  of  the  Picts  against  the  new 
Vallum,  while  the  Roman  troops  stationed  in  the 
country  threatened  to  proclaim  another  emperor.  In 
Germany  on  the  upper  Danube  and  on  the  Rhine  the 
Catti  and  the  Cauci  were  in  a  state  of  unrest  and  were 
making  raids  into  Roman  territory.  In  the  East, 
Vologeses  III.,  King  of  Parthia,  having  completed  the 
military  preparations  he  had  been  making  in  the  reign 
of  Antoninus  Pius,  invaded  Armenia,  and  drove  out 
the  king  placed  by  the  Romans  on  the  throne  of  that 
country.  From  Armenia  he  broke  into  Syria  where 
the  vassal  sovereigns  and  even  the  Syrian  cities  rose 
in  rebellion  against  the  Roman  dominion  (161). 

The  gravest  danger  was  in  the  East.  Marcus 
Aurelius  ordered  a  levy,  sent  enormous  reinforce- 
ments to  Syria  under  competent  generals,  among 
whom  was  his  own  colleague  L.  Verus,  and  began  a 
war  which  in  length  and  importance  was  destined  to 
be  comparable  to  the  great  campaigns  of  Trajan.  In 
the  3'ears  162-163  the  Roman  general  Statius  Priscus 


The  First  Germanic  Invasion  315 

succeeded  in  reconquering  Armenia  and  in  replacing 
its  exiled  monarch  on  the  throne,  but  in  Syria  Avidius 
Cassius  had  not  at  once  been  able  to  take  the  offensive. 
The  discipline  and  moral  of  the  troops  in  that  region 
were  at  their  worst.  It  was  necessary  first  to  train 
them  over  again  from  the  beginning  and  break  their 
seditious  and  rebellious  spirit.  Finally  Cassius  was 
able  to  take  the  offensive  and,  after  initial  successes 
which  broke  the  cohesion  of  the  enemy,  he  managed 
to  advance  vigorously  if  not  rapidly.  His  progress 
was  such  that,  apparently  in  165,  he  penetrated  into 
the  heart  of  the  Parthian  empire  and  burned  Seleucia, 
and  even  Ctesiphon  the  capital  of  the  kingdom. 
Lucius  Verus,  who  appears  to  have  been  up  to  this 
time  occupied  with  the  munitionment  of  the  armies  in 
Antiochia,  now  invaded  Media,  and  the  triumphs  of 
Trajan's  expedition  were  renewed.  Then,  and  not 
till  then,  the  King  of  Parthia  made  up  his  mind  to  sue 
for  peace.  This  time  the  conditions  were  less  favour- 
able than  on  previous  occasions,  and  he  had  to  cede 
upper  Mesopotamia,  which  was  the  first  conquest 
which  the  Romans  had  made  and  had  succeeded  in 
holding  in  the  region  of  the  Tigris  and  the  Euphrates 
since  the  days  of  Pompey  the  Great  (166). 

103.  The  First  Germanic  Invasion  (167-175  A.D.). 
Thus  after  five  years  the  empercr  philosopher  brought 
to  a  successful  termination  one  of  the  most  difficult 
oriental  wars  which  the  Romans  had  ever  undertaken. 
His  legions,  however,  on  their  return  from  their 
victorious  campaign  brought  back  with  them  to 
Europe  the  terrible  scourge  of  bubonic  plague  which 
claimed  more  victims  than  the  war  itself  had  done,  and 
which  for  years  desolated  more  especially  the  Balkan 
peninsula  and  Italy.     And,  as  if  all  possible  misfor- 


3i6  The  Beginnings  of  Decline 

tunes  were  fated  to  occur  simultaneously,  a  new 
danger  threatened  the  empire  now  that  the  East  had 
been  quieted,  this  time  from  the  North. 

In  1 66  all  the  provinces  north  and  south  of  the 
Danube — Dacia,  Pannonia,  Noriami,  and  Rhaetia — 
were  invaded  by  a  variegated  coalition  of  Ger- 
manic tribes  which  swept  aside  every  obstacle  and 
penetrated  as  far  as  Italy.  They  besieged  Aqui- 
leia,  burned  Opitergium  (Oderzo),  and  pushed  on  as 
far  as  the  Piave.  This  was  in  fact  the  advance 
guard  of  the  German  expeditions  which  in  subsequent 
centuries  were  destined  to  overwhelm  the  empire. 
Who  or  what  was  the  cause  of  this  new  scourge?  In 
the  absence  of  positive  information  we  are  reduced 
almost  entirely  to  hypothesis.  It  is  possible  that  at 
this  moment  there  was  a  great  movement  of  German 
and  Slavonic  tribes  from  the  East  to  the  West  which 
had  caused  unusually  severe  pressure  on  the  barbarians 
settled  on  the  frontiers  of  the  empire.  The  chief 
reason  for  what  happened,  however,  is  to  be  found  in 
the  new  conditions  which  had  arisen  in  Germany  it- 
self. The  Germanic  peoples  when  they  were  brought 
into  contact,  no  longer  with  little  Celtic  states  which 
were  practically  barbarous,  but  with  a  great  civilized 
community  like  the  Roman  Empire,  gradually  ac- 
quired a  certain  amount  of  civilization  themselves. 
They  learned  many  things,  good  and  bad,  from  the 
empire,  which  was  at  the  same  time  their  model  and 
their  terror,  among  others  greater  skill  in  defending 
themselves  against  the  Romans  by  the  adoption  of 
Roman  methods  of  warfare.  It  is  easy  to  see,  there- 
fore, how  the  old  untamable  spirit  of  rebellion  against 
discipline  and  the  old  habit  of  internecine  warfare 
graduallv  disappeared  among  the  Germans  owing  to 


The  First  Germanic  Invasion         317 

their  being  in  contact  with  the  empire,  and  how,  even 
in  Germany,  the  scattered  tribes  began  to  form  them- 
selves into  great  monarchical  states  which  were  crude 
imitations  of  the  Roman  Empire  and  attempts  to  form 
a  political  and  military  organization.  For  this  pur- 
pose, however,  they  needed  money,  and  the  Germans, 
who  were  ignorant  and  idle,  had  very  elementary  ideas 
of  how  to  exploit  their  land.  On  the  other  hand  it  is 
not  improbable  that  such  principles  of  civil  order  as 
were  introduced  among  the  barbarous  Germanic 
peoples  favoured  the  growth  of  the  population.  This 
led  to  an  economic  crisis  which  was  bound  to  drive 
them  to  invade  richer  countries  and  more  fertile  lands. 
Their  natural  objective  was  Southern  and  South-West- 
ern Europe,  civilized  and  enriched  as  it  had  been  by 
the  Roman  government,  the  Europe  of  great  cities, 
flourishing  marts,  and  fertile  plains  and  hills.  While 
the  Roman  armies  on  the  frontier  were  numerous  and 
well  trained,  the  Germans  kept  quiet;  but  for  several 
years  the  greater  part  of  the  Western  legions  had  been 
in  the  East  fighting  against  the  Parthians  in  a  war 
news  of  which  probably  reached  the  countries  beyond 
the  Rhine  and  the  Danube  in  a  very  distorted  shape. 
Naturally  enough,  therefore,  a  numerous  body  of 
barbarians,  chiefly  Germanic,  among  whom  were  the 
Marcomanni,  the  Hermonduri,  the  Quadi,  the  Jazigi, 
the  Sarmatians,  the  Scythians,  the  Victuali,  the  Ros- 
solani,  and  the  Alani,  seized  the  opportunity  of  hurl- 
ing themselves  in  accordance  with  a  preconcerted 
plan  on  the  frontiers  of  the  empire  which  they  knew 
to  be  ill  guarded. 

We  do  not  know  what  the  object  of  the  invaders 
was,  or  even  whether  they  had  any  special  object 
beyond  plunder.     It  is  certain  that  their  sudden  at- 


3i8  The  Beginnings  of  Decline 

tack  terrified  Italy,  all  the  more  because  the  empire 
still  had  so  large  a  part  of  its  forces  involved  in  the 
East.  The  gravity  of  the  danger  is  demonstrated  by 
the  fact  that  this  time  Marcus  Aurelius  put  his  books 
aside  and  went  in  person  to  defend  the  frontiers  of  his 
empire.  The  history  of  the  war  is  so  fragmentary 
that  it  would  be  impossible  to  reconstruct  it  chronologi- 
cally. We  know  that  it  lasted  till  175,  that  it  was  a 
very  violent  struggle,  that  new  legions  had  to  be  raised, 
that  this  was  no  eas}^  matter,  that  the  Romans  did  not 
rely  wholly  on  their  military  power  but  endeavoured 
by  diplomatic  means  to  break  up  the  Germanic  co- 
alition, that  the  conflict  had  various  vicissitudes,  and 
that  at  one  time  a  horde  of  Custoboci  broke  out  of 
Dacia  and  penetrated  the  very  heart  of  Greece,  getting 
as  far  as  Elatea  in  Phocis.  Whatever  the  actual  course 
of  events,  the  horrible  conflagration  appeared  in  175 
to  be  under  control.  The  enemy  seem  to  have 
been  compelled  to  cede  a  strip  of  territory  on  the  left 
bank  of  the  Danube,  to  admit  Rom.an  forts  and  garri- 
sons, to  promise  to  use  only  certain  Roman  provincial 
markets  at  certain  specified  times,  and  to  bind  them- 
selves to  furnish  soldiers  for  the  Roman  army.  At 
the  same  time  it  appears  that  they  received  certain 
compensations  for  these  concessions,  and  that,  for  the 
first  time,  barbarians  were  admitted  within  the  im- 
perial frontier,  even  into  Italy  itself,  where  they  were 
distributed  as  coloni  or  cultivators  among  the  landed 
proprietors  of  the  province.  This  was  the  first  begin- 
ning of  a  policy  destined  to  have  grave  consequences.' 

■  On  the  introduction  of  the  barbarians  into  Roman  territory 
may  be  consulted  E.  Huschke,  Ueher  den  Census  und  die  Steuer- 
verfassung  der  friiheren  Romischen  Kaiserzeit,  Berlin,  1847,  pp. 
149  ff. 


The  Revolt  of  Avidius  Cassius        319 

In  a  word  the  peace  seems  to  have  been  a  skilfully 
disguised  compromise. 

104.  The  Revolt  of  Avidius  Cassius  (175  A.D.). 
The  effects  of  this  costly,  sanguinary,  and  only  partly 
victorious  war  were  many  and  serious,  both  in  Italy 
and  in  the  provinces.  Southern  Spain  was  distiu-bed 
by  an  incursion  of  the  Mauri,  Egypt  by  an  insurrec- 
tion provoked  by  the  so-called  "  Bucolici "  about  whom 
nothing  definite  is  known.  The  finances  were  gravely 
embarrassed  and  a  further  deterioration  of  the  coinage, 
both  gold  and  silver,  became  necessary.  What  was 
more  serious  was  that  in  the  very  year  in  which  peace 
was  concluded  with  the  barbarians  the  empire  ran  the 
risk  of  a  great  civil  war,  this  time  owing  to  no  fault  of 
the  senate.  The  senate  was  extremely  well  satisfied 
with  the  emperor's  policy.  The  prince  had  not  only 
followed  the  example  of  his  immediate  predecessors  in 
renouncing  the  right  of  penal  jurisdiction  over  sena- 
tors, but  had  laid  it  down  that  capital  cases  in  which 
senators  were  charged  should  be  conducted  with  closed 
doors.  He  continued  the  useful  practice  of  appoint- 
ing Curatores  rerum  publicarum ,  but  invariably  chose 
them  with  scrupulous  care  from  the  senatorial  order. 
Once  more  finance  and  foreign  affairs  were  submitted 
to  the  supreme  direction  of  the  senate,  to  whom  also 
was  given  the  control  of  treaties,  and  to  whom  the 
right  of  appeal  was  transferred  from  the  emperor. 
"Nothing,"  he  frequently  said,  "belongs  to  the 
emperor.  The  very  house  in  which  I  live  is  your 
property."  This  time,  as  at  the  beginning  of  the 
reign  of  Hadrian,  the  signal  for  revolt  came  from  the 
military  element.  The  leader  of  the  revolt  of  175 
was  Avidius  Cassius,  the  conqueror  of  the  Parthians 
and  the  greatest  general  of  his  time,  to  whom  Marcus 


320  The  Beginnings  of  Decline 

Aurelius  during  the  Germanic  wars  had  entrusted  the 
supreme  command  in  the  East.  What  this  soldier 
thought  of  the  philosophic  emperor  is  expressed  in  an 
extant  letter  of  his  on  the  authenticity  of  which  doubts 
have  of  course  been  cast  by  contemporary^  German 
scholarship:  "Alas  for  the  country  which  must  endure 
this  tribe  which  is  so  greedy  of  riches  and  which  has 
sated  its  greed!  Alas  for  the  country!  Marcus  is 
certainly  an  excellent  man  but,  desirous  of  being 
praised  for  his  clemency,  he  allows  many  men  to  live 
whose  conduct  he  reprobates.  Where  is  that  Lucius 
Cassius  whose  name  I  bear  so  vainly?  Where  is  Cato 
the  censor  and  the  old  school  of  manners  ?  That  which 
has  long  been  lost  is  now  no  more  desired  by  any  one. 
Marcus  philosophizes,  studies  natural  science,  the 
soul,  everything  that  is  right  and  proper;  but  he  has 
no  clear  idea  of  what  is  required  by  the  State.  You 
in  Rome  see  well  what  kind  of  energy  and  action  is 
necessary  to  restore  its  ancient  character.  I  see  it 
here  when  I  observe  the  governors  of  the  provinces. 
But  can  I  call  proconsuls  and  presidents  these  men 
whose  one  idea  on  receiving  a  province  from  the  senate 
or  from  Marcus  Aurelius  is  to  lead  a  disorderly  life 
and  amass  riches?  You  know  our  philosopher's 
praetorian  pra^fect.  Three  days  before  his  appoint- 
ment he  was  poor  and  needy.  Now  he  has  suddenly 
made  his  fortune.  .  .  .  How,  I  ask,  if  not  out  of 
the  very  entrails  of  the  State  and  at  the  cost  of  the 
fortunes  of  the  provincials?   .    .    .  "  '^ 

In  this  letter  are  manifest  the  anxieties  inspired  in  a 
soldier  brought  up  in  the  old  Roman  tradition  by  the 
ever  more  pronouncedly  intellectual  and  civil  character 
which  had  been  assumed  by  the  policy  of  the  imperial 

'  [Hist.  Aug.]  Av.  Cass.,  14. 


The  Persecution  of  the  Christia?is     321 

government  since  the  time  of  Hadrian.  Secretly  but 
tenaciously  the  military  element  was  resisting  the 
transformation  of  the  State  commenced  by  the  great 
emperor  who  had  been  a  scholar  and  a  jurist,  in  order 
that  they  might  hark  back  to  the  glorious  memories 
of  Trajan.  It  would  be  difficult  to  say  how  it  came 
about  that  this  discontent  broke  out  into  open  rebel- 
lion. It  seems  that  Cassius  thought  he  ought  to  be 
the  successor  of  Marcus  Aurelius  and  that  in  175,  on  a 
false  rumour  of  the  emperor's  death  which  was  spread 
abroad  in  the  East,  he  too  hastily  proclaimed  himself, 
relying  on  the  favour  of  the  legions  and  the  support 
of  the  Eastern  governors.  When,  however,  it  became 
known  that  the  news  was  untrue  and  that  Marcus 
Aurelius  was  coming  to  the  East,  the  sense  of  order 
and  discipline  which  still  reigned  in  the  empire  tri- 
umphed. Cassius  was  slain  three  months  after  his 
pronunciamento  by  two  junior  officers,  and  when 
Marcus  reached  Antioch  and  Alexandria  there  was 
nothing  left  but  the  ashes  of  what  had  threatened  to 
be  a  dangerous  conflagration. 

105.  The  Persecution  of  the  Christians  and  the 
End  of  Marcus  Aurelius  (175-180  A.D.).  AH  these 
wars,  epidemics,  and  revolts  had  profoundly  agitated 
and  distressed  the  peoples  of  the  empire,  and  the  con- 
sequence was  a  gigantic  growth  of  popular  super- 
stition produced  by  terror.  The  humbler  classes, 
having  vainly  appealed  to  all  the  gods  of  the  old 
religions  to  save  them,  turned  furiously  against  the 
Christians.  Marcus  Aurelius,  as  a  good  Stoic,  could  not 
be  much  inclined  to  this  "superstition," '  but  his  natural 
and  constant  mildness  would  certainly  have  prevented 
him  from  being  severe  had  not  his  hand  been  forced 

'  Meditations,  xi.,  3. 

VOL.    II  —  21 


322  The  Beginnings  of  Decline 

by  public  opinion  throughout  the  empire,  which  be- 
came ever  more  fierce  against  the  growing  Christian 
minority.  Already  between  163  and  167  the  martyr- 
dom of  St.  Justin  had  taken  place  at  Rome,  although 
he  had  been  freely  allowed  to  defend  Christianity  in 
the  time  of  Antoninus.  This  had  been  followed  by  a 
persecution  which  had  gradually  grown  more  intense 
as  the  position  of  the  empire  had  become  more  serious, 
and  it  had  been,  so  to  say,  authorized  by  a  decree  of  the 
emperor  in  which  torture  and  death  were  threatened 
against  Christians  as  such,  and  not  merely  in  so  far  as 
they  were  guilty  of  ordinary  offences. 

On  his  return  from  the  East,  Marcus  Aurelius  cele- 
brated a  splendid  triumph  at  Rome  for  the  victories 
over  the  Germans  and  the  Sarmatians  (December  23, 
176).  It  was  on  this  occasion  that  the  senate  voted 
him  the  fine  equestrian  statue  that  is  still  admired  on 
the  Capitol,  and  on  the  Campus  Martius  the  column 
which  still  rises  in  Rome  from  the  square  that  bears  its 
name  (Piazza  Colonna),  and  which  is  adorned  with 
bas-reliefs  representing  the  struggle  with  the  peoples 
of  the  Danube.  The  column  and  the  statue  were  well 
earned,  for  the  philosophic  emperor  had  done  his  duty 
as  a  general  and  had  spared  no  pains  to  defend  the 
empire. 

At  this  point  Marcus  Aurelius  took  a  decision  which 
no  one  would  have  expected  of  him.  His  colleague, 
L.  Verus,  having  died  some  years  previously,  the  em- 
peror adopted  in  his  place  L.  Aurelius  Commodus, 
Verus's  son,  and  caused  him  to  be  invested  with  the 
tribunician  power  in  177  after  having  conferred  on 
him  the  title  of  imperator  at  the  end  of  176.  Com- 
modus was  then  fifteen  years  of  age,  and  it  is  difficult 
to  explain  how  it  was  that  the  Stoic  philosopher  so 


The  Persecution  of  the  Christians      323 

suddenly  abandoned  the  method  of  adoption  to  which 
he  himself  owed  the  empire  and  which  had  been  so 
successful,  or  why  he  resorted  to  the  dangerous  dynas- 
tic principle  of  heredity,  in  favour  of  a  boy  of  fifteen, 
thus  repeating  the  experiment  which  had  such  disas- 
trous results  in  the  case  of  Nero.  This  act  of  Marcus 
Aurelius  is  alone  sufficient  to  show  that  Avidius  Cas- 
sius  may  not  have  been  altogether  wrong  in  his  es- 
timate of  the  emperor  which  is  quoted  above.  Be 
that  as  it  may,  the  adoption  of  Commodus  was  des- 
tined to  have  consequences  which  were  all  the  more 
serious  as  Marcus  did  not  long  survive  that  event. 
In  178  he  had  once  more  to  go  to  the  Danubian  frontier 
where  there  was  renewed  unrest  among  the  Germans. 
He  had  been  there  for  about  two  years,  busy  with 
battles  and  negotiations  when  death  overtook  him  in 
180  at  Vindobona  (Vienna). 

In  his  civil  administration  Marcus  Aurelius,  con- 
stantly occupied  as  he  was  with  war,  could  not  do 
great  things  like  Hadrian.  Yet  he  continued  Hadrian's 
traditions  so  far  as  times  and  circumstances  permitted. 
He  built  little,  for  he  lacked  money.  He  re-estab- 
lished the  iuridici  for  Italy  abolished  by  Antoninus, 
He  protected  rhetoricians,  jurists,  and  philosophers. 
He  appears  to  have  assigned  a  salary  of  100,000  ses- 
terces to  the  members  of  the  imperial  concilium  and 
60,000  to  the  council's  legal  advisers.  He  developed 
charitable  institutions  by  appointing  a  prcefectus  ali- 
mentorum  of  consular  rank.  He  pursued  the  policy 
of  mitigating  the  severities  of  the  civil  and  criminal 
law  and  of  making  both  more  rapid  and  more  humane; 
in  their  action.  In  a  word,  if  the  world  was  not  par- 
ticularly happy  under  his  rule,  it  must  be  admitted 
that  the  emperor  philosopher  did  his  duty  ainid  Qir- 


324  The  Beginnings  of  Decline 

cumstances  and  difficulties  by  no  means  congenial  to 
his  temperament.  The  one  mistake  which — so  far  as 
we  can  see — he  might  have  avoided,  was  his  mistake 
about  Commodus.  Ancient  writers  tell  us  that  ac- 
cording to  the  general  opinion  there  was  one  man  who 
would  have  been  a  worthy  successor — Pompeianus. 
Why  did  Marcus  not  choose  him?  And  if  he  had 
chosen  him  would  Pompeianus  have  been  able  to  avert 
the  grave  crisis  which  we  shall  shortly  have  to  relate? 
These  are  terrible  questions  which  history  cannot 
answer. 

106.  The  Empire  at  the  Death  of  Marcus  Aurelius. 
Its  Splendours  and  its  Weaknesses.  The  reign  of 
Marcus  Aurelius  closed  the  golden  age  of  the  Roman 
Empire.  The  second  century  after  Christ  was  in 
fact  the  age  of  the  greatest  prosperity  and  happiness 
which  the  countries  governed  by  Rome  were  ever 
destined  to  enjoy.  This  was  the  effect  of  many  causes, 
immediate  and  remote:  of  the  profound  peace  which 
with  som.e  insignificant  exceptions  prevailed  in  the 
interior;  of  the  natural  process  of  repair  which  had 
begun  in  the  provinces  in  the  preceding  century,  and 
of  which  the  beneficial  effects  were  now  mature;  of 
the  imperial  administration  which  was  in  general 
efficient.  The  grandiose  system  of  roads,  the  dimin- 
ished variety  of  languages,  weights,  measures,  and 
coinage,  the  assimilation  of  manners,  the  canaliza- 
tion of  rivers  throughout  the  empire,  the  efficient 
policing  of  the  seas,  the  closer  relations  with  Rome,  the 
army  itself — all  these  created  and  favoured  new  cur- 
rents of  exchange  which  brought  into  mutual  contact 
the  most  widely  separated  regions  and  in  each  pro- 
duced knowledge  of  new  habits  and  new  commodities, 
and  at  the  sanie  tirn§  new  wants  and  new  activities. 


Empire  at  the  Death  of  Marcus  Aurelius  325 

Everywhere  were  opened  factories  for  textiles, weapons, 
and  dyes.  The  industries  of  the  East,  the  manufac- 
ture of  purple,  of  glass  and  jewellery,  flourished  ex- 
ceedingly, having  found  new  and  rich  markets  in  the 
less  civilized  provinces  of  the  West.  Even  the  parts 
of  Europe  which  had  remained  longest  barbarous, 
such  as  Northern  Italy,  Gaul,  and  Spain,  began  with 
some  success,  although  not  without  imperfection,  to  imi- 
tate the  products  of  oriental  industry.  Inniimerable 
merchant  ships  ploughed  the  Mediterranean,  great 
commercial  expeditions  explored  new  rivers  and  coasts, 
and  pushed  as  far  as  remote  India  and  China  in  search 
of  silk  and  pearls,  of  rice  which  was  then  used  as  a 
medicament  or  a  highly  luxurious  article  of  food,  and 
taking  with  them  in  addition  to  the  gold  and  silver 
which  these  very  remote  countries  accepted  in  pay- 
ment for  their  goods,  the  few  products  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean such  as  wine,  which  were  consumed  there.  Like 
commerce  and  industry,  agriculture  was  at  the  height 
of  its  prosperity  and  the  cities  great  and  small  which 
were  rising  everywhere  were  surrounded  with  smiling 
orchards  and  gardens. 

The  population  also  was  increasing,  especially  in  the 
larger  cities,  which  were  developing  very  fast  while  the 
lesser  centres  were  losing  their  importance,  as  always 
happens  in  very  large  states  which  are  prosperous 
and  provided  with  rapid  and  secure  communications. 
Riches,  culture,  luxury,  industry,  and  commerce 
tended  to  become  concentrated  in  a  few  rapidly  grow- 
ing centres  of  population,  opulence,  and  beauty,  like 
Carthage,  Alexandria,  Antioch,  Ephesus,  Thessalonica, 
Milan,  Verona,  and  Lyons,  not  to  speak  of  Rome.  Of 
this  phenomenon,  which  has  been  repeated  in  so  many 
other  States,  there  are  conspicuous  traces  in  ancient 


326  The  Beginnings  of  Decline 

writers,  but  an  indirect  proof  is  afforded  by  the  grow- 
ing solicitude  of  the  emperors  about  the  adminis- 
tration of  the  smaller  towns.  In  this  tendency  of 
imperial  policy  has  been  seen  merely  one  of  the  usiir- 
pations  produced  by  absolutism,  but  it  is  more  just  to 
regard  it  as  one  effect  of  the  decline  of  the  lesser  towns 
in  favour  of  the  great  cities.  There,  little  by  little, 
the  richer  families  and  the  more  cultivated  individuals 
tended  to  congregate,  and  in  the  lesser  places  the  social 
elements  which  supplied  the  materials  for  local  ad- 
ministration in  the  ancient  city  were  no  longer  to  be 
found.  The  result  was  that  local  administration 
failed  more  and  more  and  the  imperial  authorities  had 
to  supply  its  defects. 

Intellectual  progress  kept  pace  with  material  im- 
provements. The  second  century  was  distinguished 
by  the  widest  diffusion  of  public  education  throughout 
all  the  countries  of  the  empire  although  great  master- 
pieces in  art  and  letters  were  rare.  "The  empire  is 
crammed  with  schools  and  scholars,"  exclaimed  the 
Roman  poet  Juvenal  and  the  Greek  rhetorician  Aris- 
tides  with  one  voice.  Literature,  philosophy,  and 
science  ceased  to  be  the  exclusive  preserve  of  little 
cliques  of  choice  spirits  and  became  popular.  Culture 
was  no  longer  to  be  so  profound  but  it  was  much  more 
universal ;  intellectual  activity  was  less  fertile  but  more 
widely  diffused.  A  love  of  philosophy  pervaded  all 
classes,  and  good  taste  spread  from  the  capital  to  the 
remotest  townships,  where  private  liberality  vied  with 
official  energy  in  beautifying  the  streets  and  imitating 
Rome.  The  most  striking  proof  of  all  this  splendour 
was  that  for  a  moment  the  ancient  world  was  on  the 
point  of  abandoning  its  pessimistic  doctrine  of  corrup- 
tion and  of  regarding  this  great  transformation  of  the 


Empire  at  the  Death  of  Marcus  Aurelius  327 

world  as  we  regard  it,  that  is  to  say,  as  progress. 
"The  world,"  said  Terttillian,  a  Christian  writer,  "is 
ever>'-  day  better  known,  better  cultivated,  and  more 
civilized  than  before.  Everywhere  roads  are  traced, 
every  district  is  known,  every  country  opened  to 
commerce.  Smiling  fields  have  invaded  the  forests; 
flocks  and  herds  have  routed  the  wild  beasts ;  the  very 
sands  are  sown;  the  rocks  are  broken  up,  the  marshes 
drained.  There  are  now  as  many  cities  as  there 
formerly  were  cottages.  Reefs  and  shoals  have  lost 
their  terrors.  Wherever  there  is  a  trace  of  life  there 
are  houses  and  himian  habitations  and  well  ordered 
governments."' 

All  this,  as  has  too  often  happened  in  the  world's 
history,  was  no  more  than  a  fleeting  semblance  of  pros- 
perity destined  to  disappear  at  the  first  gust  of  mis- 
fortune. At  this  moment  indeed  begins  a  period 
which,  by  reason  of  its  contrast  with  what  went  before, 
presents  a  tragic  enigma  to  the  historian.  The  mis- 
chief did  not  come  from  without.  Had  it  been  so,  the 
crisis  would  have  been  shorter  and  more  easily  over- 
come. Nor  does  the  responsibility  for  the  melancholy 
era  which  was  now  dawning  rest  entirely  with  the 
men  who  now  rose  to  power  and  who  certainly  were 
better  than  they  have  been  represented  by  tradition. 
The  evil  was  internal  and  was  latent  in  a  certain  want 
of  balance  between  the  forces  which  governed  the 
empire.  The  empire  was  now  ruled  by  a  senate  in 
which  was  gathered  the  very  flower  of  the  rich  and 
cultivated  families  of  the  provinces  from  Gaul  to 
Africa  and  Syria,  an  aristocracy  whose  equal  for  cul- 
ture, refinement  of  taste,  nobility  of  aspiration,  and 
variety  of  view  the  ancient  world  had  never  seen.     In 

»  Tertvill.,  De  anima,  30. 


328  The  Beginnings  of  Decline 

this  aristocracy  the  austere  and  diffictdt  virtues  of  the 
Roman  character  were  tempered  by  the  influences 
of  the  loftiest  Greek  culture.  In  its  ranks  all  forms  of 
human  genius  and  activity  were  brilliantly  represented. 
There  were  generals,  administrators,  jurists,  men  of 
letters,  philosophers,  patrons  of  art  and  literature. 
They  aspired  to  preserve  the  military  vigour  of  the 
empire  while  they  gave  it  a  humane,  intelligent,  and 
splendid  government  which  shed  about  it  all  the 
benefits  of  civilization  and  peace.  Trajan,  Hadrian, 
Antoninus,  Marcus  Aurelius,  all  attest  the  zeal  and 
devotion  with  which  they  discharged  this  task.  But, 
as  the  aristocracy  of  the  empire  became  more  refined, 
cultivated,  splendid,  and  hiunane,  as  their  aspirations 
became  ever  higher  and  nobler,  the  army  became  more 
barbarous.  Under  Claudius  and  Nero,  the  provincials 
made  their  entry  into  the  army,  and  they  became  more 
numerous  in  the  ranks  under  the  Flavians.  But  with 
the  advent  of  the  Antonines,  especially  the  two  last  of 
the  line,  foreigners  and  actual  barbarians  were  re- 
ceived into  the  legions. '  True,  these  barbarians,  when 
they  entered  the  army,  were  made  Roman  citizens, 
but  the  mere  title  of  citizen  was  not  enough  to  change 
their  disposition.  Even  more  serious  was  the  fact 
that  the  prsetorian  guard,  once  the  lepository  of  the 
purest  Roman  spirit  of  all  the  troops,  was  invaded, 
though  more  slowly,  by  the  same  process  of  deteriora- 
tion, for  the  number  of  Italians  among  them  declined 
as  the  growing  riches  of  the  peninsula  more  and  more 
disinclined  its  citizens  to  military  service.^  Between 
these  two  forces — the  senate  and  the  army — interposed 
what  we  should  now  call  the  administration,  the  nu- 

'  Cf.  O.  Seeck  in  Rheinisches  Museum,  43,  611-613. 
'  Dio  Cass.,  Ixxiv.,  2;  cf.  C.  I.  L.,  vi.,  2375-2402. 


The  Reign  oj  Commodus  329 

merous  body  of  magistrates  who  exercised  the  civil 
and  military  functions  of  the  State.  This  body,  at 
any  rate  so  far  as  the  higher  posts  were  concerned,  was 
still  recruited  on  the  aristocratic  principle  from  per- 
sons possessing  the  rank  and  education  of  senators  and 
knights.  Above  them  all  stood  the  emperor,  the  first 
and  most  powerful  of  the  senators,  the  head  of  the 
army,  of  the  nobility,  and  of  the  administration,  the 
symbol  of  empire  and  of  authority,  invested  with 
powers  which  had  never  been  any  more  clearly  defined 
than  the  legal  principle  from  which  those  powers 
emanated.  It  was  clear  that  while  the  emperor,  the 
administration,  and  the  senatorial  aristocracy  were 
agreed  they  would  have  the  power  to  keep  the  legions 
in  order.  The  reigns  of  Trajan,  of  Hadrian,  of  An- 
toninus Pius,  and  of  Marcus  Aurelius  are  a  sufficient 
proof  of  this.  But  what  would  happen  on  the  day  on 
which  this  accord  was  broken  ?  This  was  the  question 
now  to  be  put  to  the  empire  at  the  moment  when  it 
had  reached  the  zenith  of  its  prosperity — a  question 
to  which  a  tragic  answer  was  given  by  the  terrible 
century  the  history  of  which  is  now  to  be  related. 

107.  The  Reign  of  Commodus  (180-192  A.D.). 
The  choice  of  Commodus  as  his  successor  which  had 
been  made  by  Marcus  Aurelius  showed,  after  a  hund- 
red years  of  almost  unbroken  concord,  how  fragile  a 
thing  the  agreement  between  the  emperor  and  the 
senate  was.  Since  Titus  and  Domitian,  Commodus 
was  the  only  case  in  which  a  son  had  succeeded  his 
father  in  the  supreme  office,  and  the  fact  that  he  was 
only  nineteen  years  of  age  aggravated  the  situation. 
The  senate,  which  had  never  acknowledged  the  prin- 
ciple of  hereditary  transmission  of  the  imperial  dig- 
nity, and  which  favoured  the  candidature  of  Claudius 


330  The  Beginnings  of  Decline 

Pompeianus,  regarded  the  accession  of  Commodus  as 
a  usurpation.  It  was  not  long,  therefore,  before  there 
was  a  rupture  between  the  emperor  and  the  senate, 
the  consequences  of  which  were  all  the  more  serious  as 
Commodus  was  a  young  man  who  resembled  Nero 
much  more  closely  than  Domitian  to  whom  his  con- 
temporaries more  frequently  compared  him. 

After  a  brief  apprenticeship  he  abandoned  the  affairs 
of  state  to  his  praetorian  prasfect,  and  gave  himself  up 
to  enjoying  the  empire,  thus  aggravating  the  discon- 
tent and  hatred  of  the  senate.  This  negligence  and 
the  suspicion  with  which  the  senate  regarded  him 
afforded  an  opportunity  greedily  seized  by  many  low- 
class  adventurers  to  rise  to  offices  hitherto  reserved  for 
men  of  senatorial  and  equestrian  rank.  Under  Com- 
modus repeated  attempts  were  made  to  deprive 
senators  of  the  exclusive  privilege  of  occupying  high 
positions  in  the  State.  Obscure  and  unworthy  persons 
insinuated  themselves  everywhere  and  often  succeeded 
in  placing  themselves  above  the  highest  and  noblest 
in  the  empire.  At  the  same  time  the  young  prince 
sought  to  multiply  the  outward  and  visible  signs  of  his 
supremacy  over  everything  and  everybody.  He  set 
himself  to  revive  in  his  person  all  the  adulatory  titles 
which  the  senate  had  abhorred  in  the  case  of  Nero  and 
Domitian.  The  inevitable  consequence  of  such  con- 
duct was  a  renewed  opposition  and  a  multiplicity  of 
conspiracies,  and  in  a  few  years  this  bitter  struggle 
between  the  emperor  and  the  senate  disorganized  the 
whole  administration. 

We  know  little  of  the  policy  of  Commodus.  It  is 
therefore  difficult  for  us  to  estimate  it,  to  judge,  for 
example,  whether  the  peace  which  he  concluded  with 
the  Germanic  tribes  which  had  given  his  father  so 


Pertinax  33 1 

much  trouble  was  honourable  and  profitable  or  the 
reverse.  It  is  certain,  however,  that  during  his  reign, 
which  lasted  twelve  years,  there  were  frequent  revolts 
in  many  of  the  provinces,  that  there  were  grave  symp- 
toms of  disorganization  in  the  armies,  that  there  were 
enough  deserters  in  Gaul  to  form  the  makings  of  a 
rebellion,  and  that  the  finances  went  from  bad  to  worse. 
Such  a  reign  could  have  but  one  end.  As  in  the  case 
of  Nero  and  Domitian,  Commodus,  in  his  turn,  be- 
came more  and  more  suspicious  and  violent  and  raised 
about  him  such  an  atmosphere  of  hatred  and  fear  that 
his  own  friends  finally  became  convinced  that  they 
must  rid  the  empire  of  his  presence.  On  December  31 , 
192,  a  group  of  courtiers,  fearing  for  their  own  per- 
sonal safety,  and  certain  of  being  supported  by  a 
large  measure  of  public  favour  and  applause,  success- 
fully combined  to  assassinate  the  emperor. 

108.  Pertinax  (Jan.  i-March  28,  193  A.D.).  The 
end  of  Commodus  recalled  that  of  Domitian,  as  his 
reign  had  recalled  that  of  Nero.  The  great  question 
now  was  whether  his  death  would  be  followed  by  the 
outbreak  of  a  crisis  such  as  had  followed  the  fall  of 
Nero,  or  whether  a  new  Nerva  would  at  once  arise  to 
lead  the  empire  back  to  happier  days.  A  great  effort 
was  made  to  avoid  a  revolutionary  crisis  which  for  a 
moment  seemed  to  be  successful.  The  senate  chose 
as  emperor  Publius  Helvius  Pertinax,  a  man  who  might 
truly  be  described  as  a  new  Nerva,  and  they  intimated 
their  choice  with  so  much  firmness  and  resolution  that 
the  praetorians  accepted  it.  Pertinax  was  a  homo 
novus,  for  he  was  the  first  of  his  family  to  enter  the 
senate,  but  he  had  gained  the  latus  clavus  by  services 
in  the  army.  His  character  was  simple  and  austere, 
and  as  a  soldier  he  impersonated  like  Trajan  all  the 


332  The  Beginnings  of  Decline 

traditions  of  Roman  militarism.  He  hastened,  there- 
fore, once  more  to  recognize  all  the  rights  of  the  senate 
and  to  concede  to  them  all  the  honours  which  were 
their  due.  He  dismissed  from  office  all  the  adven- 
turers introduced  by  Commodus,  he  recalled  the  exiles, 
and  immediately  took  in  hand  the  restoration  of  the 
finances  and  of  the  discipline  of  the  armies,  especially 
of  the  praetorian  guard  which  had  been  vitiated  in  the 
bad  days  of  Commodus,  in  all  things  acting  in  concert 
with  the  senate.  But  in  attempting  to  re-establish 
the  former  discipline  of  the  pr^torians  he  presvuned 
too  much  on  his  own  authority  and  on  that  of  the 
senate.  Even  that  body  was  now  too  much  contam- 
inated by  low-class  provincials.  On  March  28,  193, 
three  months  after  his  accession  to  the  Empire,  the 
praetorians  revolted  and  killed  Pertinax  in  his  palace. 
His  death  was  followed  by  a  great  panic  in  Rome,  in 
the  midst  of  which  two  senators,  Sulpicianus,  who  was 
the  father-in-law  of  the  murdered  emperor,  and  Didius 
Julianus,  one  of  the  richest  of  the  senatorial  body, 
seized  the  opportunity  to  persuade  the  praetorians  to 
acclaim  them  emperors.  Sulpicianus,  whom  Pertinax 
had  directed  to  calm  the  mutinous  praetorians,  suc- 
ceeded in  entering  their  camp  while  Didius  Julianus 
remained  outside.  But  the  praetorians  well  knew  how 
to  exploit  the  situation,  and  through  deputations 
which  they  sent  to  Sulpicianus  and  Julianus  they  put 
the  empire  up  to  auction,  asking  each  in  turn  what 
donations  he  would  give  in  exchange  for  his  election. 
Didius  Julianus  offered  most  and  was  made  emperor. 
The  empire,  however,  was  not  yet  a  thing  which 
could  be  sold  to  the  highest  bidder.  When  the  legions 
in  the  provinces  heard  what  had  happened  at  Rome, 
they  refused  to  recognize  the  bargain  and  revolted 


Pertinax  333 

against  the  emperor  of  the  praetorians.  The  legions 
of  Britain  proclaimed  their  commander,  D.  Clodius 
Albinus;  those  of  Pannonia,  L.  Septimius  Severus; 
those  of  Egypt,  C.  Pescennius  Niger.  After  124  years 
the  outbreak  after  the  death  of  Nero  was  repeated. 
The  uncertainty  of  the  legal  principle  governing  the 
succession  to  the  supreme  authority  had  once  more 
driven  the  legions  to  intervene  and  their  intervention 
produced  a  civil  war. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE   ABSOLUTE   MONARCHY:   SEPTIMIUS  SEVERUS 
(193-21 1   A.D.) 

109.  The  Civil  War  and  the  Victory  of  Septimius 
Severus  (193-197  A.D.).  Of  the  three  pretenders 
the  most  acceptable  to  the  senate  was  Pescen- 
nius,  an  Italian  probably  of  noble  family.  It  does 
not  appear  that  he  was  a  man  of  much  education, 
but  he  was  a  good  soldier  and  by  his  courteous  man- 
ners he  ingratiated  himself  with  everyone,  includ- 
ing the  troops,  on  whom,  however,  he  imposed  the 
most  rigid  discipline.  Clodius  Albinus,  on  the  other 
hand,  was,  like  Severus,  of  African  descent,  hav- 
ing been  born  at  Hadrumetum  of  an  ancient  and  no- 
ble family.  He  had  many  adherents  at  Rome,  and 
many  friends  in  the  senate.  Septimius  Severu-s,  who 
sprang  from  a  rich  and  well  known  family  of  Lep- 
tis,  was  the  most  cultivated  of  the  three  competi- 
tors, for  he  had  received  a  very  brilliant  education 
both  in  Latin  and  in  Greek.  He  had  studied  at 
Athens,  and  as  a  young  man  had  devoted  himself  to 
literature.  He  was,  however,  the  first  of  his  family  to 
become  a  senator  and  a  magistrate,  and  he  was, 
therefore,  a  novus  homo.  Whether  for  this  reason  or 
for  some  other  that  we  do  not  know,  he  was  the  candi- 
date least  favoured  by  the  senate. 

334 


The  Victory  of  Septimius  Sever  us     335 

But,  though  he  was  the  least  favoured  candidate, 
Septimius  Severus,  as  governor  of  Pannonia,  was  the 
one  who  happened  to  be  nearest  to  Italy  and  he  had 
enough  resolution  and  intelligence  to  profit  by  this 
geographical  advantage.  Without  loss  of  time  he 
marched  on  Italy  and  descended  with  his  army  into 
the  valley  of  the  Po.  Didius  Julianus,  having  no 
troops  but  the  praetorian  guard  which  had  been  unable 
to  bar  the  passes  of  the  Alps,  defended  himself  as  best 
he  could.  But  the  disparity  of  force  was  too  great. 
He  was  abandoned  by  his  soldiers  and  by  the  fleet, 
and  on  the  approach  of  Septimius  Severus  the  senate 
deposed  and  condemned  him  to  death,  electing  the 
governor  of  Pannonia  in  his  place. 

The  circumstances  of  his  election  were  such  that 
the  new  emperor  could  be  under  no  illusion  as  to  the 
sentiments  entertained  towards  him  by  the  senate, 
which  had  accepted  him  under  compulsion.  But 
Septimius  Severus  knew  that  he  had  to  contend  with 
two  powerful  rivals,  and  therefore  did  his  best  to  make 
a  favourable  impression.  He  punished  the  accomplices 
of  Didius  Julianus;  he  caused  the  apotheosis  of  Perti- 
nax  to  be  decreed;  he  promised  not  to  condemn  any 
senator  to  death,  and  even  made  the  senate  pass  a  law 
declaring  any  emperor  who  did  so  a  public  enemy; 
he  declared  that  his  reign  would  be  guided  by  the 
example  of  Pertinax  and  Marcus  Aurelius.  He  did 
not  hesitate  to  disband  the  praetorian  guard  which  had 
slain  Pertinax  and  put  the  empire  up  for  sale,  dismiss- 
ing all  the  soldiers  who  composed  it,  and  filling  their 
places  by  the  best  that  could  be  chosen  from  the  other 
legions.  Finally,  in  order  to  immobilize  Clodius 
Albinus  and  to  please  the  senate,  he  declared  him  his 
colleague  in  the  empire  and  his  presumptive  heir. 


33^  The  Absolute  Monarchy :  Septimius  Sever  us 

giving  him  the  supreme  command  of  the  western 
provinces. 

Having  taken  this  precaution  and  having  given 
these  pledges  of  his  intentions  to  the  senate,  he  turned 
to  the  East  to  attack  Pescennius,  who  had  already 
secured  for  himself  Asia  and  Egypt,  the  neutrality  of 
Armenia,  and  the  alliance  of  several  oriental  sovereigns 
among  whom  the  most  important  was  the  King  of 
Parthia.  Severus  was  determined  that  Pescennius 
should  not,  like  Vespasian,  be  allowed  time  in  which 
to  prepare  to  attack  him,  and,  knowing  that  rapidity 
of  action  was  the  best  means  of  success,  he  remained 
only  a  month  in  the  capital  and  then  immediately  left 
for  the  East  at  the  head  of  a  great  force.  Having 
repulsed  the  enemy  and  blockaded  a  large  part  of  his 
force  in  Byzantium,  Severus,  or  rather  his  generals, 
defeated  the  remainder  first  at  Cyzicus,  then  at  Nicea, 
and  finally  near  Issus.  The  fighting  was  very  severe 
but  in  the  end  his  most  dangerous  rival  was  beaten 
and,  in  the  course  of  a  tragic  flight,  captured  and 
beheaded  (194).  It  appears  that  the  partisans  of 
Pescennius  were  severely  treated,  but  no  senator  was 
condemned  to  death.  Those  who  were  most  seriously 
compromised  were  punished  by  the  confiscation  of  the 
whole  or  part  of  their  patrimony. 

But,  although  Pescennius  was  dead,  the  war  was  not 
over,  for  Byzantium  still  resisted  desperately.  More- 
over Septimius  Severus  could  not  flatter  himself  that 
his  victory  would  increase  the  goodwill  of  the  senate. 
He  therefore  decided  to  give  his  government  a  more 
secure  and  legitimate  tenure,  and  in  195  he  celebrated 
his  own  adoption  by  Marcus  Aurelius!  To  cause 
himself  to  be  adopted  by  the  act  of  a  dead  man  was 
from  the  legal  point  of  view  an  extremely  bold,  not  to 


The  Victory  of  Septimius  Sei^erns     337 

say  extravagant,  proceeding.  But  by  ofifering  vio- 
lence in  this  way  both  to  law  and  common  sense  he  was 
able  to  represent  himself  as  the  continuator  of  the 
Antonines  whose  name  was  so  much  venerated 
throughout  the  empire.  Further  it  appears  that 
Septimius  made  use  of  this  adoption  to  secure  for 
himself  the  vast  fortune  left  by  Commodus. '  At  the 
same  time,  while  pressing  the  siege  of  Byzantium  even 
more  closely,  he  made  provision  for  the  complete 
subjection  of  the  East,  and  sent  an  expedition  to 
Adiabene  and  Osroene,  the  sovereigns  of  which  had 
supported  Pescennius.  The  whole  of  195  was  occupied 
with  this  expedition  and  with  the  siege  of  Byzantium, 
which  finally  capitulated  in  the  spring  of  196.  The 
East  might  be  said  to  be  conquered  and  Septimius 
Severus  hastened  back  to  Italy. 

There  was  a  strong  opposition  in  the  senate,  which 
since  the  death  of  Pescennius  had  fixed  its  hopes  on 
Clodius  Albinus.  The  latter  had  only  accepted  the 
position  of  colleague  to  Septimius  in  order  to  have 
time  to  prepare  an  army  against  him  in  Gaul  and 
Britain.  He  had  now  openly  raised  the  standard  of 
rebellion,  had  convoked  a  counter-senate,  and  threat- 
ened, like  another  Vitellius,  to  make  a  descent  from  the 
Alps.^  As  usual  Severus  lost  no  time.  Immediately 
on  his  arrival  in  Italy  he  caused  Clodius  Albinus  to  be 
declared  a  public  enemy  by  the  army  and  by  the  senate, 

'  Dio  Cass.,  Ixxvi.,  9. 

'  [Hist.  Aug.]  Clod.  Alb.,  8,  on  the  other  hand,  attributes  the 
beginning  of  this  war  to  Septimius  Severus,  but  the  account 
given  is  so  full  of  romantic  stratagems  that  it  inspires  no  con- 
fidence. The  concatenation  of  events  shows  clearly  that  the  war 
was  begun  by  Clodius  Albinus,  who  had  a  strong  party  in  the 
senate  behind  him. 

VOL.    II — 22 


33^  The  Absolute  Monarchy:  Septimius  Severus 

and  persuaded  the  senate  to  proclaim  his  own  son 
Septimius  Bassianus  (the  future  Caracalla)  Caesar, 
thus  designating  him  heir  to  the  empire.  Bassianus 
was  made  to  assume  the  venerated  name  of  Marcus 
Aurelius,  perhaps  in  order  to  compensate  for  the  vio- 
lence with  which  the  hereditary  principle  was  thus 
asserted.  Septimius  then  left  Rome  to  carry  on  the 
war.  His  task  was  no  light  one.  If  we  may  believe 
Dio,  Albinus  had  collected  not  less  than  150,000 
men  and  Severus  opposed  him  with  as  many  more, 
that  is  to  say,  counting  auxiliaries,  about  fifteen 
legions,  a  force  larger  than  had  ever  been  employed 
against  the  Great  King,  and  a  really  enormous  army 
for  antiquity. 

The  events  of  this  war  are  little  known.  It  appears 
that  Albinus  was  at  first  successful  and  that  this 
caused  great  joy  to  the  senate  at  Rome.  But  in  a 
decisive  battle  at  Tivurtium  (Trevoux)  not  far  from 
Lyons  the  new  pretender  was  finally  defeated  (Febru- 
ary 19,  197). 

This  time  Septimius  declared  to  the  senate  that  the 
severities  of  Sulla,  Marius,  and  Augustus  were  prefer- 
able to  the  weakness  which  had  ruined  Caesar  and 
Pompey.'  Twenty-nine  senators  were  condemned 
to  death,  a  great  number  of  rich  Gauls  and  Spaniards 
who  had  supported  Albinus  were  also  executed,  and 
their  property  confiscated.  The  product  of  these 
confiscations  was  immense.  Part  was  divided  among 
the  soldiers,  part  paid  into  the  treasury,  and  part 
taken  by  Severus,  who  thus  laid  the  foundations  of 
his  colossal  private  fortune,  destined  to  be  the  greatest 
which  any  of  the  emperors  had  hitherto  possessed.  ^ 

'  Dio  Cass.,  Ixxv.,  8. 
»  Herod.,  iii.,   15,  3. 


The  Reign  of  Sever  us  339 

no.     The  Reign  of  Severus  and  its  Characteristics. 

The  God  of  War  had  pronounced  final  judgment. 
Like  Vespasian,  Severus  at  the  head  of  his  victorious 
legions  was  now  master  of  the  situation.  What  could 
the  senate  do  but  submit?  But  Severus,  imlike 
Vespasian,  was  not  an  Italian  but  an  African,  on  whom 
(as  we  have  seen  was  the  case  with  Africans)  the 
Roman  spirit  sat  like  a  thin  and  lightly  adhering 
veneer,  beneath  which  seethed  all  the  passions  and 
the  instincts  of  his  race.  Severus  had  none  of  Tra- 
jan's filial  respect  for  the  senate  and  the  institutions 
of  the  aristocratic  republic,  he  had  none  of  the  admir- 
ation of  a  disciple  or  the  gratitude  of  a  beneficiary. 
Not  that  he  was  an  enemy  of  the  senate  or  deliberately 
wished  to  humiliate  and  belittle  it.  In  quieter  times, 
as  himself  one  of  many  senators,  he  would  probably 
have  been  no  less  jealous  than  any  other  of  the  privi- 
leges of  his  own  order.  But  fortune  had  permitted 
him  to  win  the  empire,  at  the  cost  of  terrible  dangers, 
against  the  will  of  the  senate  who  had  preferred  Pes- 
cennius  Niger  and  Clodius  Albinus  to  him.  Having 
won  it  he  was  determined  to  keep  it  and  to  enjoy  it — 
herein  appeared  the  African — as  the  possession  of 
himself  and  of  his  family.  Even  before  he  conquered 
Albinus  he  had,  as  we  have  seen,  appointed  his  son  his 
colleague  and  had  conferred  great  dignities  on  his  wife 
Julia  Domna,  a  Syrian  lady  of  illustrious  family  and 
high  intelligence.  Further  he  had  openly  shown 
that  the  imperial  authority  was  to  be  used  to  make 
his  fortune.  He  was,  in  fact,  the  first  emperor  who 
set  up  a  system  of  administration  for  his  private  for- 
tune and  appointed  procuratores  privatarum  rerum. 
He  was  well  aware  that,  little  as  the  senate  had  liked 
his  triumph,  they  would  like  still  less  a  government 


340  The  Absolute  Monarchy:  Septimius  Sever  us 

animated  by  this  spirit.  It  was  inevitable,  therefore, 
that  he  should  distrust  the  senate,  and,  without  open 
antagonism,  he  sought  support  for  his  government, 
not,  as  the  Antonines  had  done,  in  the  prestige,  the 
sincere  admiration,  and  the  willing  co-operation  of  the 
great  council,  but  in  the  energy  and  intelligence  of  a 
small  group  of  trusted  and  devoted  servants  whose 
origin  and  rank  were  matters  of  indifference  to  him,  in 
the  army  which  rivalled  the  senate  in  being  the  source 
of  the  supreme  imperial  authority,  and  in  the  classes 
below  the  senatorial  order,  more  especially  the  knights. 
Hence,  under  his  rule,  there  was  an  increase  in  the 
authority  and  consideration  of  the  imperial  function- 
aries, particularly  in  that  of  the  advocati  fisci,  of  the 
head  of  the  fiscus  who  took  the  title  of  rationalis,  and 
of  the  praetorian  praefect.  For  the  first  time  the 
pr^torian  praefect  was  admitted  to  the  senate,  and  for 
the  first  time  after  so  many  years  and  in  spite  of  the 
presence  of  the  emperor  in  Rome,  we  are  confronted 
with  a  new  Sejanus  in  the  person  of  C.  Fulvius  Plauti- 
anus,  who  for  some  time,  until  disaster  overtook  him, 
had  as  much  power  as  the  emperor  himself  and  even 
more.  This  was  no  exceptional  case.  The  praetorian 
praefect  now  became  not  only  the  head  of  all  the 
praetorian  troops  but  also  the  director  of  the  whole 
personnel  of  the  imperial  administration.  His  judicial 
powers  were  extended,  for  it  appears  that  in  addition 
to  appeals  from  the  provincial  authorities,  he  con- 
trolled the  penal  jurisdiction  for  all  Roman  territory 
within  a  hundred  miles  of  the  capital.  Similarly  in  the 
provinces  the  governors  were  deprived  of  the  right  to 
levy  taxation,  and  the  senate  of  the  duty  of  carrying 
out  the  census,  which  was  now  entrusted  to  imperial 
functionaries  drawn  from  the  equestrian  order.    With 


The  Reign  of  Sever  us  341 

a  view  to  increasing  the  prestige  of  the  knights  Severus 
not  only  allowed  them  to  occupy  offices  hitherto 
reserved  for  senators  but  he  granted  new  titles  of 
honour,  such  as  vir  egregius  or  the  higher  distinction 
of  vir  perjectissimus,  to  knights  who  distinguished 
themselves  in  the  posts  to  which  they  were  ap- 
pointed. These  honours  made  a  knight  the  equal  of 
a  senator  without  admitting  him  to  the  senatorial 
order,  and  the  result  was  to  reduce  the  prestige  of  the 
senate. 

The  strongest  measure,  however,  which  Severus 
took  to  consolidate  his  power  was  his  attempt  to 
please  the  army.  He  was  in  very  truth  the  soldiers' 
emperor,  both  in  virtue  of  the  manner  of  his  election 
and  the  methods  of  his  government.  The  army  was 
increased  by  three  new  legions.  The  pay  of  the  le- 
gionaries was  raised.  They  were  given  the  right  to 
contract  regular  marriages  or  something  similar,  ^  and 
also  the  right  to  promotion  by  merit  into  the  ranks  of 
the  praetorians  which  were  now  reserved  for  them 
alone.  To  the  veterans  was  granted  the  right  of 
being  dispensed  from  all  public  burdens  ivacatio  a 
muneribus) .  Ex-officers  received  new  titles  of  honour 
and  generals  handsome  gratuities.  A  more  impor- 
tant reform  was  that  equestrian  rank  was  attached  to 
the  office  of  centurion,  the  highest  to  which  a  common 
soldier  could  be  promoted,  and  which  corresponded  to 
that  of  captain  in  modern  armies.  Finally  many 
civil  posts  were  reserved  for  officers  on  half  pay.  It 
is  clear  that  Septimius  Severus  was  endeavouring  to 
reinforce  the  equestrian  order  and  the  civil  service 
by  introducing  elements  taken  from  the  army,  thus 

•  Herod.,  iii.,  8,  5.  But  the  passage  is  obscure  and  the  exposi- 
tion of  the  remainder  is  also  far  from  lucid  and  full  of  gaps. 


342  The  Absolute  Monarchy:  Septimius  Severus 

creating,  over  against  the  senatorial  nobility,  a  new 
social  order,  loyal  and  devoted  to  himself,  from  which 
he  chose  the  men  who  were  to  create  an  administra- 
tive system  which  should  regard  the  emperor  as  its 
benefactor  and  its  head. 

III.  Severus  in  the  East:  the  Parthian  War  (197- 
198  A.D.).  An  emperor  who  relied  on  the  army  was 
bound  to  concern  himself  much  with  the  glory  and 
prestige  of  the  Roman  arms.  While  Severus  was 
fighting  Clodius  Albinus  in  Gaul  the  King  of  Parthia 
invaded  Mesopotamia  and  laid  siege  to  Nisibis. 
Mesopotamia,  the  new  conquest  of  M.  Aurelius,  and 
perhaps  also  Syria,  Armenia,  and  Cappadocia,  seemed 
once  more  to  be  in  danger.  Severus  could  not  tolerate 
such  an  affront.  In  197,  immediately  after  he  had 
pacified  Europe,  he  turned  his  attention  to  the 
war  with  Parthia.  His  preparations  were  on  a  great 
scale,  and  adequate  to  the  occasion.  Vologeses  was 
beaten  and  for  the  third  time  the  way  to  Ctesiphon 
was  opened  to  the  Roman  legions.  The  emperor 
entered  the  city  which  was  handed  over  to  the 
troops  to  plunder,  and  100,000  Parthians,  citizens 
and  soldiers,  were  made  prisoners.  The  return  march, 
however,  as  always  happened,  was  by  no  means  such 
an  easy  matter,  and  the  army  suffered  terrible  hard- 
ships in  the  desert  from  hunger  and  thirst.  If  Trajan 
had  found  it  impossible  to  keep  the  Parthians  in 
subjection,  Severus  was  still  less  in  a  position  to  do  so, 
for  the  empire  had  certainly  grown  weaker  since  Tra- 
jan's time.  Having  therefore  inflicted  a  profound 
humiliation  on  the  King  of  Parthia  he  made  peace  in 
198  or  199,  on  the  basis  of  the  status  quo  ante  bellum, 
securing  perhaps  some  advantageous  rectification  of 
the  Mesopotamian  frontier. 


The  End  of  the  Reign  of  Septimius  Sever  us  343 

Severus  did  not  immediately  return  to  the  West. 
Whether  because  the  oriental  situation  seemed  to  him 
to  require  his  presence  or  because  he  preferred  to  re- 
main at  a  distance  from  Rome,  and  from  the  senate,  in 
order  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  he  was  the  emperor  of 
the  provinces,  solicitous  for  the  interests  of  them  all 
and  not  merely  the  head  of  a  narrow  oligarchy,  Severus 
remained  in  the  eastern  provinces  until  202,  strengthen- 
ing the  military  defences,  distributing  crowns  to  the 
feudatory  princes,  restoring  the  discipline  of  the  le- 
gions and  the  government  of  the  various  countries, 
and — what  was  most  characteristic  of  his  policy — 
establishing  Roman  colonies  everywhere.  He  visited 
Palestine  and  Egypt,  and  from  Palestine  issued  an 
edict  on  the  subject  of  the  Christians  which  practically 
confirmed  those  of  Trajan  and  Marcus  Aurelius. '  But 
the  times  were  unquiet  and  a  spirit  of  fear  and  super- 
stition was  abroad.  The  edict  was  enough  to  let 
loose  the  latent  anger  of  the  populace  throughout  the 
East  against  the  Christian  minority  which  was  con- 
stantly growing  and  insinuating  itself  everywhere. 
Once  more  in  many  provinces'  the  governors  had  to 
yield  to  public  opinion,  and  once  more  there  followed 
a  series  of  denunciations,  trials,  torturings,  condem- 
nations, executions,  and  martyrdoms. 

112.  The  End  of  the  Reign  of  Septimius  Severus 
(202-211  A.D.).  In  202  Severus  returned  to  Rome, 
where  he  was  received  with  great  festivities  and  with 
most  flattering  decrees  from  the  senate  which  voted  in 
his  honour  the  erection  of  the  triumphal  arch  which 
still  stands  on  the  Via  Sacra  opposite  the  Capitol. 
Severus  refused  most  of  the  proffered  honours  and  even 
a  triumph.     He  thanked  the  senators,  begging  them 

'  [Hist.  Aug.]  Sever.,  17. 


I 


344  The  Absolute  Monarchy:  Septimius  Sever  us 

to  preserve  in  their  hearts  the  affectionate  sentiments 
they  had  expressed  so  profusely  in  the  solemn  decrees 
of  their  assembly,  and  turned  his  attention  to  the 
peaceful  government  of  the  empire. 

A  contemporary  who  was  no  admirer  of  Severus 
thus  describes  the  virtuous  day  of  the  new  Augustus : 

"He  was  at  work  by  dawn  and  discussed  affairs  of 
State  while  he  walked  up  and  down.  When  the  hour 
of  the  sittings  of  his  tribunal  arrived  he  went  thither, 
unless  it  was  a  day  of  solemn  festival,  and  gave  his 
most  careful  attention  to  his  duties.  He  gave  up  to 
the  litigants  as  much  time  as  they  asked  and  to  us 
senators  who  sat  in  judgment  with  him  he  allowed 
great  liberty  of  opinion.  He  remained  in  court  until 
midday.  Thereafter  he  went  out  riding  for  as  long 
as  he  could,  or  took  part  in  some  other  form  of  physi- 
cal exercise  before  going  to  the  bath.  He  dined  abun- 
dantly either  alone  or  with  his  sons.  After  the  meal 
he  usually  slept,  and  after  taking  his  repose  he  con- 
versed, walking  up  and  down  as  before,  with  Greek 
or  Latin  men  of  letters.  In  the  evening  he  took  a 
second  bath  and  supped  with  those  who  happened  to 
be  with  him,  for  he  never  invited  any  one  formally  and 
only  gave  siimptuous  banquets  on  days  when  they 
could  not  be  dispensed  with.  "' 

At  Rome  Septimius  Severus  continued  to  develop 
his  political  and  administrative  system  which  shifted 
the  centre  of  authority  from  the  senate  to  the  emperor 
and  the  army.  Resistance  now  everywhere  disap- 
peared; even  the  senate  in  its  impotence  resigned 
itself  to  the  inevitable.  What  could  have  been  the 
result  of  a  new  conspiracy,  even  if  successful,  but 
to  provoke  another  civil  war  among  the  legions,  from 

'  Dio   Cass.,  Ixxvi.,  17. 


The  End  of  the  Reigft  of  Septimius  Severus  345 

which  another  soldier  would  have  emerged  triumph- 
ant? Thus,  without  protest  from  anyone,  Septim- 
ius Severus  was  the  first  of  the  emperors  who  was 
practically  universally  addressed  as  Dominus — a  title 
which  had  for  centuries  been  abhorred  by  the  Rom- 
ans. He  was  also  the  first  emperor  who  administered 
justice  not  in  the  Forum  but  in  his  own  palace,  and  the 
first  who  dared  to  put  Italy  on  an  equal  footing  with 
the  provinces  by  using  the  title  of  proconsul  in  Rome 
itself  and  by  stationing  a  legion  in  addition  to  the 
praetorians  in  the  vicinity  of  the  city.  It  was  a  wise 
provision,  for  the  disaster  which  overtook  Didius 
Julianus  had  shown  that  Italy,  not  having  any  military 
force  besides  the  imperial  guard,  was  at  the  mercy  of 
the  provincial  legions  if  ever  they  chose  to  mutiny. 
But  another  of  the  cardinal  principles  on  which 
Augustus  had  founded  the  government  of  the  empire 
was  thereby  abohshed. 

Severus  remained  six  years  at  Rome,  energetically 
administering  the  empire  and  immune  from  con- 
spiracies. His  good  fortune,  his  alertness  of  mind,  and 
his  energy  secured  tranquillity.  In  208  he  left  for 
Britain  because,  according  to  one  ancient  authority, 
he  was  anxious  about  the  tendencies  shown  by  his 
two  sons  Bassianus  and  Geta.  Having  resolutely 
adopted  the  dynastic  principle  Septimius  had  given  the 
elder  the  title  of  Augustus  and  made  him  his  colleague 
during  the  Parthian  war  and  had  made  the  younger 
Augustus  in  209.  The  young  princes,  however,  resem- 
bled Commodus  in  caring  for  no  company  but  that  of 
gladiators  and  chariot  drivers  from  the  circus,  and 
what  was  more,  they  hated  each  other.  To  distract 
them  from  their  unworthy  pursuits  their  father,  ac- 
cording to  ancient  writers,  decided  on  an  expedition 


346  The  Absolute  Monarchy:  Septimius  Severus 

against  Caledonia  (Scotland)  and  perhaps  on  the 
conquest  of  that  difficult  country.  As  a  matter  of 
fact  Britain  had  been  in  a  state  of  unrest  for  a  long 
time  and  the  revolt  of  Albinus  had  not  made  matters 
any  better. 

The  war  was  long  and  difficult.  The  terrain  was 
mountainous,  thickly  wooded,  and  covered  with 
marshes,  among  which  the  natives  waged  a  ferocious 
guerilla  warfare.  At  the  cost  of  many  sacrifices  the 
Roman  army  reached  the  mysterious  extremities  of 
the  great  island,  but  on  February  4,  211,  Severus  died 
at  Eboractmi  (York).  Shortly  before  his  death  he 
had  not  only  ordered  the  recall  of  the  legions  from 
Scotland  but  also  the  abandonment  of  the  most 
advanced  line  of  forts  established  by  Agricola  and 
Antoninus  Pius  in  favour  of  the  excellent  defensive 
system  of  Hadrian.  The  expedition,  therefore,  had 
led  to  no  tangible  result. 

113.  Historical  and  Legal  Importance  of  the 
Reign  of  Severus.  Septimius  Severus  was  a  dis- 
tinguished soldier  but  he  was  not  merely  a  soldier. 
He  was  also  a  man  of  great  and  refined  culture. 
Round  him  and  the  Empress  Julia  Domna,  the 
empress's  sister  Julia  Moesa,  and  his  nieces,  Julia 
Soemia  and  Julia  Mammasa,  gathered  a  lettered  court 
adorned  by  not  a  few  of  the  brightest  spirits  of  the 
age.  Among  these  it  will  be  enough  to  mention 
Ulpian  and  Paulus,  the  greatest  lawyers  in  the  empire, 
who  were  members  of  the  consilium  principis,  and 
Papinian  who  was  praetorian  praefect.  Thus,  in  the 
midst  of  the  stir  and  bustle  of  his  many  wars,  Severus 
like  his  predecessors  continued  the  great  process  of 
developing  the  rational  and  humane  system  of  law 
which  is  one  of  the  greatest  glories  of  Rome.     More- 


Importance  of  the  Reign  of  Severus    347 

over  it  cannot  be  denied  that  he  solidly  reconstituted 
the  authority  of  the  State  by  putting  an  end,  as 
Vespasian  had  done,  to  the  anarchy  produced  by  the 
mutinous  legions,  that  he  restored  the  prestige  of  the 
Roman  arms,  that  he  re-established  the  finances, 
though  he  also  had  recourse  freely  to  the  expedient  of 
depreciating  the  coinage, — in  his  denarii  the  percent- 
age of  alloy  rose  to  fifty  and  in  some  cases  even  to 
sixty.  On  the  other  hand  he  destroyed  practically 
entirely  the  authority  of  the  senate  which  Vespa- 
sian had  rejuvenated,  and  which  had  for  a  century 
been  the  source  of  all  legal  authority.  Surprised  by 
the  catastrophe  of  Commodus  the  senate  had  placed 
its  hopes  first  in  Pertinax,  then  in  Pescennius,  and 
then  in  Clodius  Albinus.  Deceived  in  all  these  it  had 
been  gradually  degraded  and  belittled  under  Septimius 
Severus,  leaving  the  way  clear  for  the  growth  of  mili- 
tary absolutism  and  surrendering  practically  all  the 
rights  and  privileges  it  had  claimed  for  so  many 
centuries.  Much  has  been  written  by  modem  his- 
torians in  dispraise  of  the  servility  of  the  senate 
under  Septimius  Severus.  But  when  it  is  remembered 
how  completely  the  composition,  the  spirit,  the  very 
soul  of  an  assembly  may  alter  even  in  a  few  years 
under  the  pressure  of  circumstances,  it  will  not  seem 
so  surprising  that  the  Roman  senate  underwent  this 
process  of  decline  when  confronted  by  Septimius 
Severus  the  victorious  head  of  the  legions — a  force 
which  must  have  seemed  to  them  all  the  more  invin- 
cible from  the  very  fact  that  it  had  unexpectedly 
sprung  on  them  as  the  result  of  a  political  convulsion. 
For  the  rest,  if  we  may  judge  by  its  immediate  effects, 
this  diminution  of  the  senate  was  beneficial.  The 
government  of  Septimius  Severus  was  more  energetic 


348  The  Absolute  Monarchy:  Septimius  Severus 

and  laborious  than  that  of  the  last  of  the  Antonines, 
owing  to  the  very  fact  that  it  was  no  longer  bound  to 
take  account  of  the  wishes,  the  rights,  the  privileges, 
and  the  prejudices  of  the  senate.  This  benefit,  how- 
ever, was  counterbalanced  by  a  grave  danger.  The 
senate  being  discredited,  what  was  to  be  the  legal 
source  of  power  for  the  emperor's  successor  when  he 
died?  The  hereditary  principle,  in  itself,  was  not 
enough,  both  because  it  was  not  yet  universally  recog- 
nized and  because  the  power  of  Severus  was  of  too 
recent  growth.  The  hereditary  principle,  therefore, 
had  to  find  support  in  another  factor — the  will  of  the 
armies.  When  the  senate  was  set  aside  the  armies 
became  as  a  general  rule  what  they  had  hitherto 
been  only  occasionally  and  by  accident — the  power 
which  chose  or  recognized  emperors  and  legiti- 
mated their  authority.  But  the  armies  were  now 
nothing  but  a  miscellany  of  all  the  races  in  the 
empire,  and  were  full  of  barbarians  with  hardly  a 
veneer  of  civilization.  The  terrible  consequences  of 
this  revolution  were  not  long  in  making  themselves 
apparent. 

We  may  safely  date  the  beginning  of  absolute  mon- 
archy from  Septimius  Severus.  He  was  the  first  of 
the  wiser  emperors  who,  with  the  support  of  the  army, 
openly  and  without  hesitation  substituted  their  own 
authority  and  that  of  officials  dependent  on  them  for 
that  of  the  senate.  It  would  be  impossible  to  say 
whether,  if  he  had  wished,  he  could  have  been  a  second 
Vespasian,  and  whether  the  change  was  made  to 
gratify  his  ambition  or  under  pressure  of  the  inexorable 
force  of  circumstances.  But  whether  it  was  voluntary 
or  was  forced  upon  him,  it  was  this  change  that 
caused  the  appalling  catastrophe  which  must  now  be 


Importance  of  the  Reign  of  Severus    349 

related  and  for  which  Septimius  Severus  must  bear 
his  share  of  the  responsibility  before  the  tribunal  of 
history.' 

'  One  of  the  best  accounts  of  Septimius  Severus  is  to  be  found 
in  the  two  chapters  devoted  to  him  by  Duruy  in  his  Histoire 
des  Romains,  Paris,  1883,  vi.,  pp.  1-143. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE    GREAT  CRISIS  IN  THE  THIRD  CENTURY 

(211-284   A.D.) 

1 14.  From  Septimius  Severus  to  Alexander  Severus : 
Caracalla,  Macrinus,  Heliogabalus,  On  the  death  of 
Severus  the  senate  recognized  as  emperors  his  two 
sons,  M.  Aurelius  Antoninus  and  Publius  Septimius 
Geta  who,  as  we  have  seen,  were  already  colleagues  of 
their  father  in  the  empire.  Along  with  the  principles 
of  military  monarchy  the  principle  of  hereditary 
succession  was  now  so  boldly  affirmed  that  the  empire 
was  divided  like  a  private  inheritance  between  the 
two  sons  of  the  deceased  emperor.  But  the  first 
experience  of  the  new  order  of  things  was  not  happy. 
The  elder  son,  who  from  his  favourite  style  of  cloak 
was  destined  to  be  traditionally  known  as  Caracalla, 
was  a  soldier  and  nothing  more;  he  was  passionately 
fond  of  war,  greedy  of  supreme  command,  suspicious 
and  arbitrary.  He  soon  quarrelled  with  his  younger 
brother,  and,  without  wasting  time  by  prolonging  the 
controversy,  had  him  murdered.  Then,  in  order  to 
efface  the  memory  of  this  assassination,  the  first 
by  which  the  imperial  family  had  been  stained  since 
the  days  of  Nero,  he  threw  himself  into  the  arms  of 
the  soldiers  and  exaggerated  the  policy  of  his  father. 

He  still  further  humiliated  the  senate  and  apparently 
350 


From  Septimius  to  Alexander  Sever  us  351 

excluded  senators  from  all  military  command.  He 
increased  the  taxes,'  and  further  depreciated  the  coin- 
age by  reducing  the  aureus  from  1/42  to  1/50  of  the 
libra,  that  is  to  say  he  coined  aurei  which  weighed  not 
7.8  but  6.54  grammes.  He  raised  the  pay  of  the 
legions  and  practically  doubled  at  a  stroke  the  expense 
of  the  army.^  He  introduced  several  measures  of 
military  reform,  some  of  which  were  good,  and  gave 
himself  up  almost  entirely  to  war.  Of  his  campaigns 
in  Germany,  from  which  he  derived  the  title  of  Ger- 
manicus,  we  know  too  little  to  pronounce  judgment. 
It  is  certain  that  he  did  not  suffer  defeat,  and  that  for 
several  years  Germany  gave  no  trouble  to  the  empire. 
But  he  occupied  himself  more  with  the  East  than  with 
the  West,  and  seems  to  have  dreamed  of  repeating  the 
exploits  of  Alexander  the  Great  for  whom  he  had  an 
intense  admiration.  He  began  by  annexing  Osroene 
and  Armenia  and  then  turned  against  the  Parthians. 
It  appears  that  he  asked  for  the  daughter  of  Artabanus 
the  new  King  of  Parthia  in  marriage,  perhaps  under 
the  delusion  that  by  this  means  he  might  unite  the 
Roman  and  Parthian  empires.  His  request  was  re- 
fused, and  he  was  making  ready  for  a  great  campaign 
against  Parthia,  when,  in  the  midst  of  the  prepara- 
tions, he  fell  beneath  the  dagger  of  one  of  his  veterans, 
a  victim  either  of  a  soldier's  individual  discontent,  of 
the  hostility  of  his  praetorian  prsefect,  or  of  a  con- 
spiracy of  his  generals.  He  left  behind  him  nothing 
but  the  recollection  of  a  harsh  and  violent  reign. 
Amid  many  excesses,  however,  he  carried  out  one 
most  important  reform,  the  act  by  which  he  gave 


'  Dio  Cass.,  Ixxvii.,  9. 

» Ibid.,  Ixxvii.,  10,  24;  Ixxviii.,  36. 


352   The  Great  Crisis  in  the  Third  Century 

Roman  citizenship  to  all  free  men  in  the  provinces. ' 
It  is  said  that  his  aim  was  chiefly  financial.  It  may 
be  so,  but  it  is  also  possible  that  it  was  an  audacious 
exaggeration  of  his  father's  policy  in  so  far  as  that 
policy  had  sought  to  reduce  the  differences  between 
Italy  and  the  provinces.  In  any  case  this  edict  was  a 
fact  of  capital  importance,  for  it  hastened  the  bar- 
barization  of  the  Roman  governing  class  towards 
which  the  trend  of  the  times  had  been  driving  the 
empire  for  more  than  a  century. 

On  the  death  of  Caracalla  the  legions  acclaimed  as 
emperor  his  praetorian  praefect,  Marcus  Opellius  Macri- 
nus,  another  African  of  merely  equestrian  rank.  Macri- 
nus  was  the  first  knight  to  attain  the  imperial  dignity. 
For  a  man  of  his  obscure  position,  who  was  neither  of 
noble  birth  nor  illustrious  by  achievement,  the  ac- 
clamation of  the  soldiers  was  not  a  sufficient  title,  and 
election  by  the  senate,  though  much  impaired  in  value 
by  the  events  of  recent  years,  would  have  been  a 
priceless  support  to  his  pretensions.  Macrinus,  there- 
fore, spared  no  pains  to  ingratiate  himself  with  the 
senate.  He  pardoned  all  the  senators  who  had  been 
condemned  by  Caracalla.  He  annulled  many  of  the 
acts  of  his  predecessor,  more  especially  his  fiscal  meas- 
ures. But  it  does  not  appear  that  he  succeeded  in 
inducing  the  senate  to  ratify  his  election.  On  the 
other  hand  he  failed  to  compensate  the  legal  weakness 
of  his  position  by  great  military  successes.  He  was 
beaten  by  the  Parthians,  and  in  order  to  obtain 
peace  he  was  forced,  for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of 
Rome's  oriental  wars,  to  pay  a  war  indemnity.  This 
double  weakness  was  not  long  in  bringing  about  a 
catastrophe. 

'  Dio  Cass.,  Ixxvii.,  9;  Dig.,  i.,  5,  17;  Aug.,  De  civit.  Dei,  v.,  17. 


Frurd  Septimius  to  Alexander  Severus  353 

On  the  death  of  Caracalla,  his  mother  Julia  Domna 
had  starved  herself  to  death,  while  her  sister  Julia 
Moesa,  and  her  nieces  Soemia  and  Mammffia,  had 
been  banished  by  Macrinus  and  had  gone  to  live  at 
Emesa  in  the  temple  of  Heliogabalus  the  Sun  God, 
whose  priest  the  father  of  Julia  Domna  had  been. 
Each  of  these  two  ladies  had  a  son;  Soemia's  was 
Varius  Avitus  Bassianus,  a  youth  of  fourteen  who  was 
a  priest  of  the  Sun  God  like  his  grandfather,  while 
Mammsea's  was  named  Alessianus.  Julia  Moesa,  by 
taking  advantage  of  the  weakness  and  the  failures  of 
Macrinus,  and  by  lavishly  distributing  the  treasures 
of  the  temple  of  Emesa,  succeeded  in  persuading  a 
legion  stationed  near  Edessa  that  Bassianus  was  the 
son  of  Caracalla  himself,  and  in  inducing  them  to  pro- 
claim him  emperor  against  Macrinus  (May  16,  218). 
Macrinus  tried  to  resist,  but  the  revolt  spread  among 
the  discontented  legions  who  were  attached  to  the 
descendants  of  Septimius  Severus.  Macrinus,  aban- 
doned by  his  troops,  was  slain,  and,  twenty-three 
days  later,  the  young  priest  of  Heliogabalus  was  sole 
Roman  emperor  (June  8,  218). 

The  new  prince,  who  on  his  accession  assumed  the 
name  of  Marcus  Aurelius  Antoninus,  reigned  for  about 
four  years  until  March  11,  222.  With  Heliogabalus, 
as  the  new  emperor  came  to  be  known  in  history, 
the  religions  of  the  East  triumphed  over  the  opposi- 
tion which  for  so  many  centuries  had  been  maintained 
against  them  by  Rome.  This  is  a  sufficient  explana- 
tion of  the  legendary  accounts,  certainly  exaggerated 
and  in  part  untrue,  that  have  been  given  about  him 
and  about  his  reign.  Heliogabalus  set  aside  the 
official  Roman  religion.  Above  the  title  of  pontifex 
maximus   he   set   that   of   sacerdos   amplissimus   Dei 

VOL.     II 2.-< 


354  ^^^  Great  Crisis  in  the  Third  Century 

invicti  Solis  Elagabali.  He  celebrated  a  kind  of 
mystic  marriage  between  the  Syrian  divinity  of  the 
Sun  and  the  Carthaginian  Astarte,  and  introduced 
both  into  the  official  cult.  The  revolution,  dreaded 
and  avoided  for  so  many  years,  was  at  last  an  accom- 
plished fact.  The  priest  of  a  Syrian  religion  under 
the  guidance  of  women,  was  the  supreme  ruler  of 
the  Roman  Empire!  A  still  worse  misfortune  was 
that,  while  Heliogabalus  represented  the  triumph  of 
eastern  religion,  he  was  not  the  man  to  retain  the 
assistance  of  the  legions  which  had  raised  him  to 
the  summit  of  power.  Under  his  weak  and  inept  gov- 
ernment whose  sole  cares  were  religious  feasts  and 
ceremonies,  the  empire  declined  still  further.  The 
discipline  of  the  armies  was  impaired,  and  owing  to 
reckless  and  growing  extravagance  the  finances  fell 
into  almost  total  ruin. 

It  was  not  long  before  the  priest  of  the  Sun  God 
turned  Roman  emperor  was  threatened  by  secret 
and  increasing  discontent.  In  order  to  strengthen 
his  weak  government,  his  mother,  his  aunt,  and  his 
soldiers  compelled  the  emperor  to  adopt  his  young 
cousin  Alessianus,  then  scarcely  twelve  years  of  age, 
as  his  colleague  under  the  name  of  M.  Aurelius 
Severus  Alexander.  Heliogabalus  however  was  not 
well  pleased  to  have  a  colleague  who  might  well  become 
a  rival,  and  several  times  tried  in  various  ways  to  get 
rid  of  him.  Finally,  on  March  ii,  222,  when  barely 
eighteen  years  old,  he  was  murdered  by  his  infuriated 
soldiers,  who  at  the  same  time,  slew  his  mother  and 
his  friends. 

115.  Alexander  Severus  (222-235).  Modern  his- 
torians, influenced  by  the  German  school  of  criticism, 
which  is  in  spirit  entirely  monarchical  and  absolutist. 


Alexander  Severus  355 

are  fond  of  repeating  their  conviction  that  the  Roman 
senate  was  now  a  useless  and  a  ruined  institution. 
The  senate,  however,  was  the  only  legal  source  from 
which  emperors  could  derive  authority  which  was  not 
conferred  upon  them  by  their  own  personal  prestige, 
and  at  the  death  of  Heliogabalus  this  was  made  very 
clear.  Terrified  by  the  growing  predominance  of  the 
army,  the  family  of  Septimius  Severus  turned  to  the 
senate  and  begged  its  assistance  in  restoring  a  strong 
and  respected  government  whose  legitimacy  would  be 
beyond  doubt  in  the  eyes  of  everybody. 

Alexander  Severus  was  not  yet  fourteen  years  old. 
At  first  he  seems  to  have  been  guided  by  his  mother 
Julia  Mammaea  who  was  the  Agrippina  of  this  second 
Nero.  Like  Agrippina,  and  for  the  same  reason, 
Mammaea  began  with  a  restoration  of  the  republic. 
Inspired  by  his  mother  the  young  emperor,  who  was 
born  in  Phoenicia,  resumed,  and  even  exaggerated, 
the  policy  followed  by  Trajan,  Antoninus  Pius,  and 
Marcus  Aurelius.  He  refused  the  title  of  dominus, 
abolished  ceremonial  etiquette,  treated  the  senators 
as  his  equals,  and  allowed  the  senate  to  choose  the 
chief  officers  of  State,  including  the  praetorian  praefect 
and  the  provincial  governors.  The  consilium  principis 
was  again  filled  with  senators;  the  (erarium  was  again 
set  up  side  by  side  with  thefiscus;  even  in  the  imperial 
provinces  the  governors  were  assisted  by  assessors, 
jurists  for  the  most  part,  who  belonged  to  the  sena- 
torial order;  the  consuls  were  designated  by  the 
senate,  and  the  authority  of  the  imperial  procurators 
was  reduced.  Moreover  the  senate  was  purged  of  the 
worst  elements  which  had  been  introduced  in  the 
previous  reigns.  The  senatorial  order,  in  a  word, 
regained  the  position  which  had  been  lost  to  it  since 


356   The  Great  Crisis  in  the  Third  Century 

the  time  of  Septimius  Severus,  and  the  equestrian 
order  lost  much  that  it  had  won.  The  prince  and  the 
senate  entered  into  an  alliance  against  the  pretentions 
of  the  army  as  under  Septimius  Severus  the  prince 
and  the  army  had  combined  to  despoil  the  senate. 

This  senatorial  restoration,  however,  was  upset  by  a 
series  of  external  events  which  were  graver  than  any 
that  the  empire  had  had  to  face  for  a  long  time. 
About  224  or  227  there  had  taken  place  a  revolution 
in  the  East  which  completely  upset  the  equilibrium 
which  Rome  had  established  at  the  price  of  so  much 
labour.  Eight  centuries  had  passed  since  the  fall 
of  the  Median  monarchy  which  had  been  brought 
about  by  Cyrus  the  Great.  The  consequences  of 
that  event  had  been  both  tremendous  and  varied.  All 
western  Asia  had  been  united  under  the  sceptre  of 
the  Achaemenidae ;  there  had  followed  the  duel  with 
Greece  and  the  invasion  of  Alexander,  the  centuries 
occupied  by  the  wars  of  the  Diadochi  and  the  Epigoni, 
the  consolidation  of  the  Hellenistic  empire  of  the 
Seleucidee,  the  insurrection  of  Arsaces,  the  first  of  the 
line  of  Parthian  princes  in  the  middle  of  the  third 
century  before  Christ,  and  the  foundation  of  the  mon- 
archy of  the  Arsacidas.  Then  the  star  of  Rome  had 
suddenly  risen,  followed  by  the  fall  of  the  Seleucidae, 
and  finally  came  the  duel,  which  lasted  three  centuries 
and  was  never  decided,  between  Parthia  and  Rome. 
At  this  point  the  ancient  Parthian  monarchy,  which 
had  coquetted  overmuch  with  Greek  culture  and  had 
been  found  wanting  as  a  champion  in  the  contest 
with  Rome  and  the  occidental  power,  fell  as  the  result 
of  a  Persian  rebellion,  a  national  movement  which 
substituted  a  certain  Ardeshir  (Artaxerxes),  who 
claimed  to  be  a  Sassanid  like  Cyrus  the  Great,  for 


Alexander  Sever  us  357 

Artabanus  the  last  of  the  Arsacidae  who  had  been  the 
opponent  of  Caracalla  and  Macrinus.  But  this  was 
not  merely  a  case  of  a  change  of  monarch,  such  as 
the  Romans  had  so  frequently  brought  about  and 
used  for  their  advantage.  The  new  Persian  Empire 
represented  a  religious,  political,  and  national  reaction 
against  the  West,  and  therefore  against  the  Roman 
Empire  which  was  the  representation  of  western 
civilization  in  the  East.  The  new  dynasty  intended 
not  only  to  restore  to  honour  the  ancient  Iranian 
religion  of  Mazdeism  whose  prophet  had  been  Zoroas- 
ter, not  only  to  combat  Greek  culture  but  also  to 
restore  the  Persian  Empire  to  its  old  boundaries 
which  included  Asia  Minor,  the  Cyclades,  Greece, 
and  Egypt. 

Thus  the  Roman  Empire  was  confronted  by  a  new 
enemy  who  lost  no  time  in  taking  the  offensive.  In 
231  the  new  king  threw  himself  on  Roman  Mesopo- 
tamia with  the  immediate  object  of  conquering  Asia 
Minor,  and  boldly  launched  his  advance  guards  on 
Cappadocia  and  Syria.  The  Romans  made  some 
attempt  to  negotiate,  but  the  Persian  monarch  de- 
clared that  he  considered  as  belonging  to  him  all  the 
territories  which  had  been  possessed  by  Cyrus,  and 
this  amounted  to  a  demand  for  the  total  evacuation 
of  Asia.  Alexander  was  compelled  to  recall  many 
legions  from  the  Danube,  to  order  and  rapidly  arm 
new  levies  and  to  proceed  in  person  to  the  East  at  the 
head  of  strong  forces.  The  plan  of  campaign  formed 
by  his  generals  was  excellent.  One  column  was  to 
invade  Media  through  Armenia  which  was  also  at 
war  with  the  Persian  King.  Another  was  to  cross 
lower  Mesopotamia  and  threaten  the  heart  of  Persia. 
A  third  was  to  proceed  more  slowly  between  the  two 


35 8   The  Great  Crisis  in  the  Third  Century 

others  across  upper  Mesopotamia,  probably  with  the 
object  of  reinforcing  the  northern  or  the  southern 
army  as  might  be  necessary.  Before  this  great  dis- 
play of  force  Artaxerxes  retired  and  cleverly  regrouped 
his  forces  in  such  a  way  as  to  enable  him  to  make  a 
surprise  attack  on  Alexander's  southern  army,  before 
it  could  be  reinforced  from  the  centre.  His  plan  suc- 
ceeded. The  southern  army  was  defeated  and  forced 
to  retire  with  great  loss  before  the  central  army  could 
come  to  its  assistance.  The  northern  army  on  the 
other  hand  had  invaded  Persia  ravaging  the  country 
and  making  prisoners,  but  it  also  had  to  conform  to 
the  retirement  of  the  other  two  forces.  The  Roman 
expedition  therefore  had  failed  if  it  is  to  be  regarded 
as  an  attempt  at  an  invasion.  If  on  the  contrary  its 
object  was  to  repulse  the  King  of  Persia  from  the  terri- 
tories of  the  empire  it  had  been  successful,  because 
not  only  did  Artaxerxes  retreat  but  he  admitted  that 
the  time  had  not  3^et  come  when  he  could  reclaim  the 
dominion  of  Cyrus. 

In  order  to  deal  with  the  Persian  danger  Alexander, 
as  we  have  seen,  had  had  to  recall  many  legions  from 
the  Rhine  and  the  Danube.  It  appears  that  only  four 
were  left  to  guard  the  Rhine.  The  Germans  did  not 
neglect  this  opportunity.  While  Alexander  was  ter- 
minating the  war  in  the  East  a  coalition  of  Germanic 
peoples  whom  the  ancients  termed  the  Alemanni, 
succeeded  in  entering  Gaul — a  thing  that  had  not 
happened  for  a  very  long  time — while  the  Marcomanni 
crossed  the  Danube.  Alexander  had  to  transport  his 
army  to  the  West,  to  raise  new  forces  and  prepare 
for  a  second  and  not  less  serious  campaign.  But  the 
empire  had  already  made  so  great  an  effort  in  the  East 
that  Alexander  decided  in  the  second  war  to  rely 


Thirty -three   Years  of  Anarchy        359 

to  some  extent  on  negotiations  and  subsidies.  His 
intention  was  prudent,  but  the  troops  had  for  some 
time .  been  discontented  with  their  prince  who  paid 
and  treated  them  in  a  manner  very  different  from  that 
of  Caracalla  and  Septimius,  and  they  chose  to  regard 
this  policy  as  treason  to  the  empire.  DiscipHne  gave 
way ;  there  was  an  outbreak  of  uncontrollable  indigna- 
tion and  jealousy,  and  Alexander  was  murdered  along 
with  his  mother  in  January,  February,  or  March,  235. 
This  was  the  result  of  a  mutiny  headed  by  C.  Julius 
Verus  Maximinus,  a  Thracian  of  obscure  origin  who  by 
ability  and  valour  had  attained  high  promotion,  who 
was  devoted  to  the  family  of  Septimius  Severus  and 
to  the  memory  of  Caracalla,  but  who  spoke  Latin 
imperfectly.  He  was  proclaimed  emperor  by  the 
soldiers  at  Mayence. 

116.  Thirty-three  Years  of  Anarchy — from  Maxi- 
min  to  Gallienus  (235-268  A.D.).  Thus  fell  the  family 
of  the  Severi  at  the  hands  of  the  very  army  on  which 
its  power  had  been  founded  and  which  had  been 
the  instrument  of  its  fortunes.  This  time  there  arose 
no  Vespasian  and  no  Septimius  Severus  to  reduce 
promptly  to  order  the  legions  who  had  arrogated  to 
themselves  the  right  of  choosing  an  emperor  and 
imposing  him  by  force  of  arms.  With  the  death  of 
Alexander  Severus  began  a  period  of  civil  strife  com- 
plicated by  foreign  war  which  lasted  for  thirty-three 
years  and  was  the  most  terrible  that  the  empire  had 
ever  experienced.  Its  history  is  so  obscure  and  so 
confused  that  it  is  impossible  to  relate  it  in  detail. 
We  shall  try  to  give  as  clear  and  concise  an  account 
of  it  as  possible. 

Maximin  (235-238),  who  had  been  raised  to  the 
empire  by  the  power  of  the  legions,  cared  for  nothing 


360   The  Great  Crisis  in  the  Third  Century 

but  the  support  of  the  soldiers.  He  did  not  ask  the 
senate  to  ratify  his  election,  and  ruled  as  if  they  did 
not  exist,  though  he  left  them  at  their  post — the 
worst  way  of  abolishing  an  antiquated  institution. 
The  senate  were  not  disposed  to  allow  themselves  to 
be  treated  as  a  useless  survival  from  the  past  by  a 
Thracian  who  had  been  put  in  power  by  a  mutiny. 
The  proconsul  of  Africa,  M.  Antonius  Gordianus,  a 
senator  of  great  wealth  who  had  many  friends  at 
Rome  had  been  proclaimed  emperor  in  that  province 
as  the  result  of  certain  local  struggles.  The  senate 
hastened  to  recognize  him  and  he  took  as  his  colleague 
his  son  of  the  same  name,  Gordianus  II.  The  two 
Gordians,  however,  were  defeated  and  slain  by  the 
governor  of  Numidia  and  the  senate  appointed  two  em- 
perors, M.  Clodius  Pupienus  Maximus,  and  Decimus 
Caetius  Calvinus  Balbinus.  The  former  was  a  valiant 
soldier  who  had  risen  from  a  humble  origin  to  high 
command,  the  latter  a  senator  of  ancient  lineage  who 
was  much  esteemed,  though  a  mediocre  personality. 
To  these  two  was  shortly  added  a  third  emperor  in  the 
person  of  a  grandson  of  the  elder  Gordian  who  bore 
the  same  name.  He  appears  to  have  been  imposed 
upon  the  senate  by  a  kind  of  popular  emeute  in  Rome. 
However  this  may  be  the  capacity  of  Pupienus,  the 
prestige  of  Balbinus,  and  the  authority  of  the  senate 
were  sufficient  to  create  a  government  of  some  strength 
which  energetically  prepared  troops  and  armaments 
for  an  attack  on  Maximin  who  meanwhile  continued 
his  war  against  the  barbarians.  When  Maximin  per- 
ceived that  the  new  government  was  gaining  force 
and  that  the  loyalty  of  certain  of  the  governors  had 
become  doubtful  he  resolved  to  march  on  Italy  with 
his  army.     His  advance  was  arrested  by  the  fortress  of 


Thirty-three   Years  of  Anarchy        361 

Aquileia  to  which  he  was  obhged  to  lay  siege.  But 
the  loyalty  of  his  legions  was  shaken,  partly  owing  to 
the  resistance  of  the  city,  partly  to  the  weakness  of  his 
authority  which  rested  on  no  legal  title,  and  partly  to 
the  revived  prestige  of  the  senate  and  the  unanimous 
revolt  of  Italy,  and  Maximin  was  murdered  by  his 
own  soldiers  under  the  walls  of  Aquileia  in  the  spring 
of  238. 

The  senate  had  triumphed,  but  its  triumph  was 
brief.  Pupienus  and  Balbinus  quarrelled,  difficulties 
arose  with  the  legions  because  the  senate  wished  to 
make  them  feel  its  supremacy  without  having  the 
power  to  impose  it,  and,  in  the  end  the  two  emperors 
fell  victims  to  a  military  revolt  (238).  The  soldiers 
acclaimed  as  emperor  Gordian  III  (238-244).  They 
had  taken  their  revenge  on  the  senate  but  what  could 
be  the  authority  of  the  new  emperor  who  was  very 
young  and  does  not  seem  to  have  been  very  wise? 
Meanwhile  grave  events  were  happening.  In  this 
year,  238,  the  Carpi  and  the  Goths  crossed  the  Danube. 
In  241  the  Persians  under  Sapor,  the  successor  of 
Artaxerxes,  invaded  Mesopotamia  and  threatened 
Syria  itself.  Fortunately  Gordian  found  in  his 
preetorian  pra}fect,  C.  Furius  Sabinius  Aquila  Temesi- 
theus,  who  was  also  his  father-in-law,  an  intelligent, 
capable,  and  loyal  servant.  Furius  Sabinius  re- 
organized the  army  and,  in  a  series  of  brilliant  cam- 
paigns, succeeded  in  driving  out  of  the  empire  both 
the  Persians  in  the  East  and  the  Carpi  and  the  Goths 
in  the  West.  Unhappily  Furius  died  in  243  and 
Gordian  had  to  put  in  his  place  IM.  Julius  Philippus  a 
high  official  of  Arabian  birth.  Philip  was  a  good 
soldier  but  he  had  no  intention  of  serving  the  em- 
peror like  his  predecessor  in  the  subordinate  position 


362    The  Great  Crisis  in  the  Third  Century 

of  praetorian  praefect.  He  instigated  the  soldiers  to 
demand  that  Gordian  should  make  him  his  colleague 
in  the  empire,  and,  as  Gordian  showed  some  reluctance 
in  acquiescing,  he  had  him  murdered  in  the  course  of 
a  military  revolt. 

Acclaimed  emperor  by  the  soldiers,  Marcus  Julius 
Philippus,  known  as  Philip  the  Arabian  (244-249), 
sought  and  obtained  from  the  senate  the  confirmation 
of  his  authority.  But  the  authority  of  the  senate  in  its 
turn  had  now  been  too  much  shaken  to  be  sufficient. 
Philip,  who  seems  to  have  been  a  bad  ruler,  was  soon 
faced  by  various  pretenders  set  up  in  the  provinces 
to  express  the  discontent  of  this  on  that  part  of  the 
empire  with  the  government.  Finally  he  was  over- 
thrown by  a  revolt  which  was  particularly  serious, 
owing  to  the  reason  which  had  provoked  it.  The 
Goths  who  had  been  repulsed  under  Gordian,  had 
repeated  their  attempt  to  break  the  frontier  of  the 
empire,  and  with  such  great  forces  that  the  legions 
of  the  Danube  considered  the  measures  taken  by 
Philip,  whose  chief  care  was  to  consolidate  his  position 
at  Rome,  to  be  insufficient.  Wishing  to  have  an 
emperor  who  would  give  them  the  means  necessary 
to  defend  themselves  and  to  defend  the  empire  they 
proclaimed  the  governor  of  Dacia  and  Moesia,  C. 
Messius  Quintus  Traianus  Decius.  Decius  went  with 
his  army  to  Italy  and  defeated  and  slew  Philip  at 
Verona  (249). 

Decius  (249-251)  had  been  elected  to  fight  the 
Goths  and  accordingly  made  haste  to  recross  the  Alps, 
leaving  behind  him  in  Italy  P.  Licinius  Valerianus 
invested  with  the  old  office  of  censor  to  reorganize 
the  administration  and  reinvigorate  the  senate  while 
he  carried  on  the  war  against  the  Goths  who  mean- 


Thirty -three   Years  of  Anarchy        363 

while  had  thrown  themselves  upon  Thrace.  Fortune, 
however,  did  not  favour  him,  for,  after  several  com- 
bats, he  himself  finally  fell  in  battle  (251).  He  was 
the  first  of  the  Roman  emperors  to  fall  fighting  the 
barbarians,  and  it  is  easy  to  imagine  what  a  profound 
impression  this  event  must  have  produced. 

The  legions  at  once  proclaimed  as  emperor  the 
governor  of  Moesia  G.  Vibius  Trebonianus  Gallus 
(251-253),  who,  owing  to  his  military  reputation, 
appeared  to  be  the  man  most  capable  of  meeting  the 
danger.  But  Gallus  hastened  to  buy  peace  from  the 
Goths  with  gold  and  then  returned  to  Italy.  The 
Goths  did  not  keep  to  their  bargain  and  once  more 
invaded  Moesia.  This  time  they  were  defeated  by 
the  governor  M.  .^milius  .^milianus,  a  Moor,  and 
the  legions,  to  whom  ^Emilianus  had  promised  as  a 
donative  the  moneys  formerly  paid  to  the  Goths,  pro- 
claimed him  emperor  (253).  Gallus  had  him  pro- 
scribed, ordered  P.  Licinius  Valerianus  the  governor 
of  Germany,  who  had  been  censor  under  Decius  to 
march  against  the  new  pretender  while  he  himself 
endeavoured  to  dispute  with  him  the  dominion  of 
Italy  against  which  his  rival  was  marching.  Before 
the  army  of  Germany  could  arrive  the  two  pretenders 
met  in  battle  and  Gallus  was  slain  (253).  The  senate 
recognized  .^milianus.  Meanwhile,  however,  the 
German  legions  had  proclaimed  their  general  Valerian, 
and  .^milianus  having  quarrelled  with  his  soldiers, 
they  slew  him  and  recognized  Valerian  (253). 

The  times  were  terrible.  A  frightful  plague  was 
devastating  the  empire  whose  enemies,  now  encouraged 
by  its  internal  discord,  were  attacking  its  frontiers  on 
all  sides.  Between  254  and  260  the  Goths  renewed 
their  attempts  to  invade  Dacia,  Macedonia,  and  Asia 


364   The  Great  Crisis  in  the  Third  Century 

Minor.  The  Alemanni  and  the  Franks  burst  into 
Gaul.  The  Saxons,  a  new  German  tribe,  appeared  on 
the  sea,  coasting  along  Gaul  and  Britain.  Grave 
troubles  broke  out  in  Africa  and  new  dangers  threat- 
ened in  the  East,  where  Armenia  again  fell  under  the 
influence  of  Persia,  and  the  Persians  invaded  Syria. 
Valerian,  who  was  a  senator  of  noble  family  and  some 
ability,  did  not  feel  that  he  had  the  strength  to  face  all 
these  difficulties  alone,  and  took  a  step  the  effects  of 
which  were  destined  to  effect  a  gradual  revolution 
in  the  whole  history  of  ancient  civilization.  He  nomi- 
nated his  son  P.  Licinius  Egnatius  Gallienus  (253- 
268),  Augustus,  and  divided  the  empire  with  him,  giv- 
ing him  as  his  share  the  occidental  provinces  while  he 
kept  the  East  for  himself.  The  unity  of  the  East  and 
the  West  which  had  been  the  great  work  of  Rome 
was  beginning  to  break  up.  Nevertheless  this  measure 
was  very  helpful.  While  Gallienus  did  his  best  to 
arrest  the  incursions  of  the  Germanic  peoples  into  the 
western  provinces  Valerian  attempted  a  great  expedi- 
tion against  Parthia.  It  had  little  success  and  indeed 
in  259  or  260  he  was  made  a  prisoner  by  the  Persians 
and  died  in  captivity,  when  and  how  is  unknown. 

The  disappearance  of  Valerian,  who  was  the  most 
powerful  of  the  two  Augusti,  was  followed  by  a  gen- 
eral dislocation  of  the  empire.  In  258,  the  legions 
of  Gaul,  probably  instigated  by  the  local  population 
who  were  discontented  under  Gallienus,  had  already 
proclaimed  M.  Cassianus  Latinius  Postumus  emperor, 
while  the  legions  of  Pannonia  and  Moesia  had  ac- 
claimed Ingenuus.  Postumus,  who  was  a  man  of 
energy,  succeeded  in  obtaining  the  recognition  of 
Spain  and  Britain,  and  in  founding  a  veritable  Gallo- 
Iberian  empire  which  lasted  until  267  in  spite  of  the 


Thirty -three    Years  of  Anarchy        365 

attacks  of  Gallienus.  In  many  things  he  was  fortu- 
nate, for  he  vigorously  defended  his  frontiers  and 
restored  a  certain  measure  of  security  and  peace  to 
the  provinces  which  he  governed.  Ingenuus  on  the 
other  hand  failed  to  maintain  himself  in  Moesia  and 
Pannonia,  was  defeated  by  Gallienus,  and  committed 
suicide. 

While  this  crisis  was  developing  in  the  West,  the 
East,  which  had  been  left  to  itself  since  the  capture  of 
Valerian,  was  defending  itself  as  best  it  could  against 
the  Persians.  M.  Fulvius  Macrianus,  one  of  Valerian's 
generals,  assisted  by  the  rich  and  powerful  city  of 
Palmyra  and  by  Odenathus  its  most  powerful  and 
influential  citizen,  by  using  the  remains  of  Valerian's 
army  had  succeeded  on  his  own  initiative  in  driving 
out  the  Persians  and  saving  the  richest  provinces  of 
the  Eastern  Empire.  Encouraged  by  this  success, 
however,  Macrianus  decided  to  seize  the  empire  for 
himself  and  his  sons  and  caused  them  and  himself  to 
be  proclaimed  emperors.  Odenathus  on  the  other 
hand  whom  Gallienus  had  created  dux  Orientis,  re- 
mained faithful  to  the  reigning  emperor  and  thus, 
while  Gallienus  was  at  war  with  Postumus  in  the 
West,  a  new  civil  war  broke  out  in  the  East  which 
ended  in  the  defeat  and  death  of  Macrianus  and  his 
sons.  But  while  the  forces  of  the  empire  were  being 
wasted  in  civil  wars  the  boldness  of  the  barbarians 
grew  apace.  In  261  the  Alemanni  succeeded  in  in- 
vading Italy  and  Gallienus  did  not  succeed  in  defeat- 
ing them  before  they  were  approaching  Mediolanum 
(Milan).  Shortly  afterwards  the  Franks  invaded 
Gaul  and  Spain  and,  it  appears,  crossed  the  sea  and 
pushed  as  far  as  Africa.  The  barbarians  of  Eastern 
Europe — the  Borani,  the  Goths,  the  Heruli,  and  the 


366   The  Great  Crisis  in  the  Third  Century 

Sarmatians — plundered  all  the  coast  of  the  Black  Sea, 
forced  the  Dardanelles  and  even  reached  Asia  Minor 
and  Greece.  In  267  the  Heruli  were  encamped  at 
Athens,  Corinth,  Argos,  and  Sparta.  It  is  easy  to 
imagine  the  despair  of  the  unfortunate  inhabitants 
and  to  understand  why,  feeling  themselves  abandoned 
by  the  central  power,  every  district,  every  province 
rebelled  in  the  vain  hope  of  being  able  to  defend  them- 
selves by  appointing  an  emperor  of  their  own.  In  the 
last  years  of  the  reign  of  Gallienus  the  pretenders 
known  in  history  as  the  Thirty  Tyrants^  swarmed 
in  all  the  provinces  and  were  so  numerous  and  so 
feeble  that  their  history  cannot  be  recorded.  At  last 
in  268  a  conspiracy  of  generals  proved  fatal  to  Gallie- 
nus who  was  slain  while  engaged  in  besieging  Aurelius, 
one  of  his  numerous  rivals  whom  the  Rhsetian  legions 
had  proclaimed  in  Mediolanimi. 

117.  Claudius  the  Goth  (268-270  A.D.)  and 
Aurelian  (270-275  A.D.).  Of  the  three  generals  who 
conspired  against  Gallienus  two,  Marcus  Aurelius 
Claudius  and  L.  Domitius  Aurelianus,  were  men  of 
high  character  as  was  proved  by  the  event.  Claudius 
was  in  addition  the  most  skilful  and  popular  general 
in  the  whole  army.  These  eminent  persons,  therefore, 
must  have  had  a  strong  motive  of  public  expediency 
for  removing  the  legitimate  emperor  by  violence. 
This  motive  must  be  sought  in  the  new  danger  which 
threatened  the  empire — the  Gothic  peril.  Encouraged 
by  the  growing  weakness  of  the  empire  and  grown  skil- 
ful by  experience,  many  Germanic  tribes  had  united 
to  form  a  powerful  coalition  under  the  joint  names  of 

'  Their  names,  with  a  brief  notice  of  each,  are  given  in  the 
relevant  book  of  the  Historia  Augusta,  which  is  entitled  Tyranni 
Triginta  and  is  the  work  of  Tribellius  PoUio. 


Claudius  the  Goth  and  Aurelian      367 

the  Goths  and  the  Alemanni,  and  had  made  great 
preparations  for  a  formidable  attack  on  the  frontiers 
of  the  empire  and  for  the  conquest  of  a  part  of  its 
territories.  In  the  spring  of  268  an  army,  which  was 
said  to  consist  of  320,000  able-bodied  men  and  behind 
which  flocked  a  multitude  of  double  the  number  of 
women,  old  men,  and  children,*  crossed  to  the  right 
bank  of  the  Danube  and  marched  on  Marcianopolis 
(west  of  Varna).  Thence  they  inundated  eastern 
Macedonia,  Greece,  the  Cyclades,  Rhodes,  and  Cyprus 
whence  the  flood  recoiled  upon  the  coasts  of  Asia 
Minor.  At  the  same  time  another  army,  in  which  the 
Goths  also  predominated,  entered  Moesia  and  thence 
invaded  Macedonia  by  the  valley  of  the  Morava. 
Their  plan  was  now  made  manifest  in  all  its  audacity. 
It  was  to  interpose  between  the  oriental  and  the  occi- 
dental provinces,  and  to  split  the  Roman  Empire  in 
two  by  conquering  the  Balkan  peninsula.  These  were 
not  times  in  which  to  sustain  a  weak  and  incompetent 
emperor.  It  was  necessary  to  have  a  warrior  at  the 
head  of  the  State.  Claudius  accordingly  was  recog- 
nized without  dispute  by  the  other  generals,  by  the 
legions,  and  by  the  senate. 

This  time  their  choice  was  a  happy  one.  Not  far 
from  the  ancient  city  of  Naissus  (Nisch),  Claudius 
surrounded  and  destroyed  the  bulk  of  the  enemy's 
forces  (269)  and  then  waged  a  war  of  extermination 
against  the  remainder  of  the  barbarian  army.  A 
year  later  the  survivors  were  planted  in  Roman  terri- 
tory to  till  the  soil  for  their  conquerors  or  were  in- 
corporated in  auxiliary  cohorts  to  fight  for  the  defence 
of  the  empire. 

Once  more  the  empire  felt  that  it  was  governed  by  a 

» [Hist.  Aug.\  Claud.  6  and  7. 


368   The  Great  Crisis  in  the  Third  Century 

firm  and  a  strong  hand.  And  assuredly,  if  Claudius 
had  lived,  he  would  have  been  able  to  render  great 
services.  But  he  died  at  Sirmium  shortly  after  his 
victory  about  March,  270,  a  victim  of  the  plague  which 
had  now  been  devastating  the  empire  for  fifteen 
years.  Lucius  Domitius  Aurelianus,  one  of  the 
generals,  who  had  conspired  against  Gallienus,  whom 
Claudius  had  himself  designated  as  his  successor, 
was  proclaimed  by  the  legions  of  Pannonia  and  be- 
came emperor.  Aurelian,  like  Claudius,  was  a  great 
soldier,  and  his  selection  was  singularly  fortunate 
for  the  empire,  for  the  Goths  defeated  by  Claudius 
were  merely  an  advanced  guard.  Aurelian  had 
hardly  been  elected  when  the  Jutungi,  the  Vandals, 
and  the  Alemanni  invaded  Italy  itself  at  the  begin- 
ning of  271 ,  and  defeated  a  Roman  army  near  Placentia 
(Piacenza).  Shortly  afterwards  Aurelian  succeeded 
in  destroying  them,  but  not  before  they  had  reached 
Pa  via  and  Fanum  Fortunas  (Fano),  and  the  impression 
of  the  risk  run  by  Italy  was  such  that  Aurelian  resolved 
to  make  the  first  great  sacrifice  of  territory  to  which 
Rome  had  resigned  herself  since  the  defeat  of  Varus, 
by  abandoning  the  dangerous  salient  of  Dacia,  trans- 
ferring the  name  of  the  evacuated  province  to  the 
part  of  Moesia  which  extended  along  the  Danube  (271) 
and  creating  a  new  Dacia  Ripensis  whose  capital  was 
Sardica  (Sofia).  Similarly,  two  hundred  and  fifty 
years  earlier  when  the  real  German}^  was  lost,  Ger- 
mania  Superior  and  Germania  Inferior  had  been 
formed  out  of  the  territories  of  Gaul.  It  is  clear  that 
by  concentrating  his  forces  in  a  smaller  space,  Aurelian 
hoped  to  be  in  a  better  position  to  defend  Italy. 
But  this  measure  did  not  seem  to  him  sufficient,  for 
in  the  same  year  he  began  the  construction  of  the 


Claudius  the  Goth  and  Aurelian      369 

gigantic  circle  of  walls — eleven  or  twelve  miles  in 
extent — round  Rome,  which  transformed  the  Eternal 
City  into  an  enormous  fortress,  and  which  have  sur- 
vived to  be  admired  even  now  in  the  twentieth  century. 
The  empire  which  Rome  had  conquered  in  the  West 
and  which  for  two  centuries  had  saved  Roman  civili- 
zation, was  beginning  to  break  up.  Aurelius  sought 
compensation  in  the  East.  There  Odenathus,  dux 
Orientis,  who  had  saved  Rome's  Eastern  Empire  had 
died  in  266  or  267.  On  his  death  his  consort  Zenobia 
and  his  son  Athenodorus  (Wahaballath)  had  seized 
the  power  which  he  had  exercised.  The  office  of  a 
dux  Orientis  v/as  not  hereditary.  Still  less  was  it 
transmissible  to  a  woman.  But  Gallienus  had  had  to 
make  a  virtue  of  necessity,  had  recognized  Zenobia 
as  her  husband's  successor  and  had  allowed  her  to 
give  her  position  an  oriental  and  monarchical  character 
by  assuming  the  title  of  Queen.  Zenobia,  however, 
had  conceived  even  loftier  ambitions,  no  less  in  fact 
than  the  constitution  of  a  great  Syrian  State,  even  as 
Cleopatra  of  old,  whom  she  took  for  her  model,  had 
aspired  to  the  re-establishment  of  the  empire  of  the 
Ptolemies.  In  269  Zenobia  had  taken  possession 
of  Egypt,  and  Claudius,  then  occupied  in  fighting 
the  Goths,  had  not  been  able  to  oppose  her.  Now 
she  was  endeavouring  to  extend  her  sway  over  the 
whole  of  Asia  Minor.  It  was  Aurelian  who,  when  he 
had  arranged  the  affairs  of  the  West  to  the  best  of 
his  ability,  decided  to  rid  the  empire  of  this  danger. 
In  272  he  penetrated  into  Asia  Minor  and  thence 
into  Syria,  successively  storming  Ancyra,  Tyana,  and 
Antioch,  and  overtaking  the  army  of  the  Queen  at 
Emesa  on  which  she  had  retired.  Here  the  pitched 
battle  was  fought.  The  Syrian  army  was  beaten  but  not 

VOL.    II — 24 


370   The  Great  Crisis  in  the  Third  Century 

destroyed  and  was  able  to  seek  refuge  in  Palmyra  which 
Aurelian  took  only  after  a  protracted  siege.  Shortly 
afterwards  Aurelian  reconquered  Egypt  also  (273),  and 
all  the  East  was  once  more  under  the  sceptre  of  Rome. 

These  tritunphs  in  Syria  led  to  the  inevitable 
reaction  in  Europe.  The  few  pretenders  who,  like 
Tetricus  in  Gaul,  still  clung  here  and  there  to  some 
scraps  of  territory,  disappeared.  The  unity  of  the 
empire  was,  at  least  in  form,  renewed,  and  Aurelian 
might  assmne  the  title  of  Restitutor  orbis.  He  then 
sought  to  use  his  authority  to  cure  the  innumerable 
wounds  of  the  empire.  But  he  went  too  far,  and  in  a 
few  years  he  was  destined  to  fall  a  victim  to  his  desire 
to  reform  everything.  Towards  the  end  of  275  he 
perished  as  the  result  of  a  conspiracy  of  generals,  the 
reasons  for  which  are  most  obscure. 

118.  The  Last  Restoration  of  the  Authority  of  the 
Senate  (276-282  A.D.),  the  Last  Emperors  of  the  Third 
Century,  Carus,  Carinus,  Numerianus,  and  the  Elec- 
tion of  Diocletian  (282-284  A.D.).  The  assassination 
of  Aurelian  was  followed  by  a  curious  and  unexpected 
occurrence.  The  legions  refused  to  elect  an  emperor 
and  referred  this  duty  to  the  senate!  This  could 
only  mean  that  the  soldiers  at  last  understood  how 
weak  were  all  the  emperors  who  had  been  acclaimed 
by  the  legions  and  therefore  lacked  an  indisputable 
title,  however  much  this  disadvantage  might  be  com- 
pensated by  great  and  glorious  services  to  the  State. 
Elected  in  this  way  the  most  capable  no  less  than  the 
most  incapable  princes,  Aurelian  no  less  than  Gallienus, 
had  been  exposed  to  the  danger  of  being  overthrown 
by  the  very  force  which  had  set  them  up.  The  le- 
gions understood  that  the  whole  empire  in  its  desperate 
desire  for  peace,  order,  salvation,  was  turning  to  the 


The  Last  Emperors  of  the  Third  Century  371 

senate  which  for  so  many  centuries  had  been  with 
the  comitia  the  sacred  fount  of  legality  at  Rome.  But 
the  senate  was  old  and  weary,  and  at  first,  as  if 
suspicious,  tried  to  evade  the  request.  Then,  when 
compelled  to  act,  they  elected  emperor  the  most 
eminent  of  their  number,  the  princeps  senatus,  Marcus 
Claudius  Tacitus,  who  in  his  turn,  at  first  sought 
every  means  of  avoiding  the  purple.  Tacitus  tried 
to  govern  like  Trajan,  but  after  a  few  months  was 
murdered  in  the  course  of  a  mutiny  by  soldiers 
who  were  dissatisfied  with  the  weakness  of  his  rule. 
On  the  death  of  Tacitus,  some  of  the  legions  proclaimed 
his  brother  M.  Annius  Florianus  (276),  others  M. 
Aurelius  Probus  (276-282),  one  of  Aurelian's  best 
generals.  Probus  carried  the  day  but,  though  he  was 
a  general,  he  continued  the  policy  of  Tacitus,  invoked 
and  recognized  the  authority  of  the  senate,  restored 
to  that  body  the  right  of  deciding  appeals  in  criminal 
cases,  the  right  to  appoint  provincial  governors,  and 
even  that  of  ratifying  the  acts  of  the  emperor.  At 
the  same  time  he  vigorously  carried  out  a  gigantic 
frontier  policy.  The  terror  of  anarchy  which  the 
policy  of  Septimius  Severus  had  let  loose  on  the 
empire  must  have  been  very  real  when  even  a  soldier 
like  Probus  did  all  he  could  to  reconstruct  piece  by 
piece  the  shattered  edifice  of  the  senate's  power! 

But  it  was  too  late.  Probus  was  not  much  more 
successful  with  the  new  policy  than  Tacitus  had 
been.  After  having  had  to  struggle  with  several 
pretenders  who  had  been  elected  in  the  provinces 
this  brave  emperor  in  282  also  fell  a  victim  to  the 
implacable  violence  of  the  legions,  and  anarchy  broke 
out  once  more.  The  legions  chose  as  his  successor  M. 
Aurelius  Carus  (282-283)  who  hastened  to  associate 


Ti']2   The  Great  Crisis  in  the  Third  Century 

with  him  in  the  empire  his  two  sons  Carinas  and 
Numerianus,  and  immediately  undertook  a  war  with 
Persia.  The  enterprise  had  been  successful;  he  had 
already  occupied  Seleucia  and  Ctesiphon,  when  he 
was  re  roved  at  the  end  of  283,  after  reigning  a  year, 
some  say  by  a  thunderbolt  and  some  by  a  military 
conspiracy.  The  army  was  weary,  as  always,  of  the 
enormous  difficulties  of  the  Persian  war.  Numerianus 
who  had  accompanied  and  succeeded  his  father  was  a 
poet  rather  than  a  soldier  and  it  was  therefore  decided 
to  return  homewards.  But  on  the  way  Numerianus 
also  perished.  This  time,  his  father-in-law,  Aper 
the  prastorian  prasfect,  openly  avowed  having  killed 
him.  An  inquiry  was  at  once  ordered  and  a  tribunal 
of  generals  appointed  who  chose  as  emperor  the 
commander  of  the  bodyguard,  G.  Aurelius  Valerius 
Diocletianus  (September  17,  284).* 

119.  The  Economic  Crisis  in  the  Third  Century. 
The  last  attempt  to  restore  order  in  the  empire  by 
means  of  the  authority  of  the  senate  had  failed. 
There  had  now  been  uninterrupted  anarch}^  since  the 
death  of  Alexander  Severus,  that  is  for  half  a  century. 
It  had  become  worse  every  year,  and  was  more  deep- 
seated  and  widespread  than  had  ever  been  seen  in  the 
ancient  world.  The  worst  period  of  the  civil  wars  of 
the  republic  had  been  a  small  thing  in  comparison; 
for  then  the  essential  elements  of  ancient  civilization 
had  not  been  destroyed.  Now,  on  the  contrary,  the 
political  crisis  had  become  a  crisis  in  the  history  of  the 
world,  for  Greek  culture  as  well  as  Roman,  the  two 
highest  forms  of  ancient  civilization,  were  mortally 
stricken  during  these  fifty  years  and  never  afterwards 
recovered.     Wars,  invasions,  general  insecurity,  uni- 

'  This  is  the  date  given  by  the  Chron.  Pasc,  i.,  p.  510,  ed.Bonn. 


The  Economic  Crisis  in  the  Third  Century  373 

versal  impoverishment,  and  incessant  epidemics  had 
thinned  the  population.  The  persistency  with  which 
even  the  wisest  of  the  emperors  continued  to  trans- 
plant barbarians  on  to  the  territories  of  the  empire, 
notwithstanding  the  obvious  dangers  of  that  policy, 
affords  the  clearest  proof  of  the  need  of  men  from 
which  the  empire  was  suffering.  The  decline  of  the 
population  had,  as  was  natural,  produced  a  crisis  in 
agriculture  and  industry,  and  had  further  increased 
the  general  impoverishment  which  was  itself  one  of  its 
causes.  Agriculturists — coloni  liberi,  slave  labourers, 
and  small  landholders — disappeared  in  great  num- 
bers. The  small  landowner  declined  while  the  lati- 
fundia  increased,  and  land  went  more  and  more  out  of 
cultivation.  Industry,  in  its  turn,  which  had  been  so 
prosperous  under  the  Antonines,  and  even  under  the 
Severi,  suffered  severely  partly  because  many  artisans 
perished,  taking  with  them  the  precious  secrets  of 
trades  perfected  by  the  labour  of  many  generations, 
partly  because  the  spread  of  poverty  diminished  con- 
sumption, and  partly  also  because  the  means  of  ex- 
change between  the  East  and  the  West,  between 
province  and  province,  which  had  been  so  copious 
and  easy  during  the  first  two  centuries  of  the  empire, 
were  now  seriously  interrupted.  Many  mines,  especi- 
ally many  gold  mines,  were  closed  either  for  want  of 
labotir  or  because  the  districts  in  which  the\'  were 
situated  had  been  invaded  by  the  barbarians. 

The  agricultural  and  industrial  crises  were,  of 
course,  accompanied  by  a  commercial  crisis.  The 
little  general  security  enjoyed  by  the  empire,  the 
difficulties  of  communication,  the  increased  risk  and 
cost  of  voyages,  the  badness  of  the  coinage,  and  the  re- 
duction of  consumption  by  the  growth  of  poverty  had 


374   ^^^^  Great  Crisis  in  the  Third  Century 

paralyzed  trade.  All  this  was  at  the  same  time  the 
cause  and  the  effect  of  the  universal  economic  crisis 
and  the  scarcity  of  capital.  But,  while  the  riches  of 
the  empire  were  thus  declining,  the  mmiber  of  pub- 
lic burdens  was  increasing.  The  rule  of  the  financial 
policy  of  the  State  during  the  third  century  was  the 
most  odious  form  of  fiscalism,  the  inevitable  result 
of  a  multiplied  bureaucracy,  of  the  biirdensome  dona- 
tions to  the  populace  and  the  army  and  of  the  increase 
of  military  expenditure.  The  effect  of  the  continual 
increase  of  taxation  was  aggravated  by  the  monetary 
policy  of  the  empire.  Partly  in  order  to  remedy  the 
growing  dearth  of  gold  caused  b}'  the  barbarian  inva- 
sion of  the  auriferous  and  argentiferous  provinces  of 
the  empire,  partly  in  order  to  meet  the  public  expendi- 
ture without  too  much  increasing  the  taxes,  the 
emperors  acquired  the  habit  of  lessening  the  weight 
and  debasing  the  quality  of  the  coinage.  We  saw 
how  under  Caracalla  the  weight  of  the  aureus  fell  to 
6.54  grammes.  But  after  the  time  of  Alexander 
Severus,  it  became  so  irregular  that  gold  payments 
were  made  by  weight.  The  silver  coinage  was  in 
even  worse  case.  The  proportion  of  alloy  in  the 
antonianus  argenteus  issued  for  the  first  time  by 
Caracalla  had  alread}'  grown  immeasurably  in  the 
year  which  followed  the  death  of  Septimius  Severus. 
But  the  antonianus  under  Claudius  the  Goth  had  no 
more  than  4  or  5  %  of  silver,  and  v/as  only  distinguish- 
able from  the  copper  coinage  by  the  colour  imparted 
to  it  by  being  dipped  in  a  bath  of  silver,  cr,  for  that 
matter,  of  pewter. '    Even  the  copper  coins  were  issued 

'  Cf.  Lenormant,  Aureus  in  Daremberg  et  Saglio,  Dictionnaire 
des  antiquitcs,  i.,  533  and  565;  Macchioro,  in  Revista  di  Storia 
antica,  1906,  p.  293. 


The  Collapse  of  Greek  and  Roman  Culture  375 

light.  The  resiilt  was  a  tremendous  rise  in  the  price  of 
commodities,  a  universal  impoverishment  aggravated 
by  the  desperate  injunction  of  some  of  the  emperors 
to  their  unhappy  subjects  to  pay  the  taxes  in  gold. 
Thus  the  State  refused  the  bad  money  with  which  it 
was  inundating  the  empire ! 

120.  The  Collapse  of  Greek  and  Roman  Culture. 
The  economic  crisis  was  therefore  not  less  grave 
than  the  political  crisis  ov>/-ing  to  which  the  empire  had 
become  the  prey  of  the  mutinous  legions,  or  than  the 
military  crisis  owing  to  which  the  frontiers  of  the 
empire  were  hardly  defended;  and  all  three  together, 
acting  in  turn  as  cause  and  effect,  combined  to  produce 
one  of  the  most  memorable  crises  in  the  history  of 
human  civilization.  In  it  disappeared  either  through 
extermination,  poverty,  or  dispersion,  the  aristocracy, 
and  the  opulent  middle  class  which  during  the  first 
and  second  centuries  had  grown  up  all  over  the  em- 
pire and  had  been  the  foundation  of  all  its  social  and 
political  organization,  and  in  which,  after  great  efforts 
Greek  and  Roman  culture  had  been  fused  in  an 
equilibritun  which  represented  the  climax  of  ancient 
civilization.  Such  part  of  their  riches  as  was  not 
destroyed,  together  with  the  power  which  they  had 
exercised,  passed  to  a  new  oligarchy  of  moneyed  men 
and  high  officials,  civil  and  military,  which  the  terrible 
vicissitudes  of  the  time  had  brought  forth  from  the 
lower  classes  and  the  more  barbarous  populations  of 
the  empire.  Thus  the  civilization  of  the  ancients 
received  a  mortal  blow.  After  the  crisis  had  passed 
not  only  had  all  the  arts  and  industries,  such  as 
sculpture,  architecture,  and  jewel  work,  in  which 
Grasco-Roman  civilization  reached  such  perfection 
become  coarsened ;  not  only  had  all  forms  of  intellectual 


3/6   The  Great  Crisis  in  the  Third  Century 

activity,  philosophy,  law,  literature,  become  languid 
and  enervated,  but  the  religion  of  paganism  which  for 
so  many  centuries  had  been  the  foundation  of  politi- 
cal, social,  and  intellectual  life  in  Greece  and  Rome 
was  moribund.  Eastern  cults,  long  restrained  by  the 
resistance  of  the  State,  burst  in  from  all  sides  and 
threatened  to  subvert  morally  the  Graeco-Roman 
world  already  severely  shaken  by  so  many  wars  and 
revolutions. 

This  phenomenon  has  been  of  such  capital  impor- 
tance in  the  history  of  the  world  that  we  must  pause 
for  a  moment  to  inquire  why  it  was  that  at  this  mo- 
ment the  populations  of  the  empire  preferred  oriental 
religions  to  Greeco-Latin  paganism.  There  were  va- 
rious reasons,  two  of  which  were  more  important 
than  the  rest.  The  first  of  these  was  the  superiority 
of  the  eastern  religions  from  the  purely  religious 
point  of  view,  a  superiority  which  was  connected  with 
the  inferiority  of  the  culture  of  the  oriental  peoples. 
The  Grasco-Latin  world  had  reached  such  a  degree  of 
intellectual  and  moral  development  as  to  be  capable 
of  separating  metaphysics  and  ethics  from  religion. 
Paganism  was  therefore  reduced  to  a  body  of  myths 
and  ceremonies,  outside  of  which  had  developed  what 
would  now  be  called  a  secular  system  of  philosophic 
and  moral  life.  It  was  not  so  with  the  oriental 
religions.  Not  only  did  the}'  work  upon  the  senses 
and  excite  the  passions  more  strongly  than  paganism 
by  the  pomp  of  their  festivals,  by  the  splendour  of 
their  processions  and  their  hymns,  by  the  terrors,  the 
hopes,  and  the  ecstasies  which  the  transcendentalism 
of  their  mysteries  inspired ;  but  they  filled  the  place  of 
the  schools  of  philosophy  which  the  eastern  peoples 
had  never  known  how  to  create.     For  these  religions 


The  Collapse  of  Greek  and  Roman  Culture  377 

contained  metaphysical  systems  of  their  own;  they 
confronted  the  problems  of  man's  destiny,  of  life, 
and  of  the  universe,  and  claimed  that  they  had  reached 
a  solution.^  In  an  epoch  in  which  philosophical  cul- 
ture had  so  much  decayed  these  religions,  offering, 
as  they  did,  both  a  metaphysic  and  a  system  of 
morals  which  were  alike  positive,  simple,  free  from 
doubts,  and  uncomplicated  with  excessive  discussion, 
must  have  appeared  to  be — as  in  fact  they  were — 
superior  to  the  formalistic  and  somewhat  empty 
paganism  which  had  to  be  supplemented  by  a  high 
philosophic  culture. 

The  other  reason  was  that  the  oriental  cults  which 
arose  in  countries  under  absolute  government  almost 
all  contained  a  mystical  justification  of  a  supreme 
authority,  which  amid  the  anarchy  of  the  third  century 
was  well  calculated  to  attract  the  attention  of  the 
governing  classes  of  the  empire.  As  the  authority 
of  the  senate  and  the  force  of  tradition  gradually 
declined,  these  classes  tended  to  seek  in  religion  for 
a  mystical  principle  of  legitimism  which  gave  the 
imperial  authority  a  more  solid  foundation  than 
the  fickle  favour  of  the  legions  or  the  caprices  of  the 
fortune  of  war. 

The  history  of  Mithraism  is  a  remarkable  instance 
of  this  phenomenon.  Mithraism  inherited  the  princi- 
ples of  the  ancient  Mazdeism  of  Iran  combined  with 
the  principles  of  Semitic  theology  and  with  other  ele- 
ments of  the  indigenous  religions  of  Asia  Minor.  It 
came,  therefore,  from  a  country  against  which  Rome 
had  maintained  a  tenacious  struggle  for  centuries. 

*  Cf.  Boissier,  La  religion  romaine  d'Auguste  aux  Antonins, 
Paris,  1892,  i.,  pp.  354  ff;  Cumont,  Les  religions  orientales  dans 
le  paganisme  romain,  Paris,  1906. 


378    The  Great  Crisis  in  the  Third  Century 

Yet  in  the  third  century  we  find  it  diffused  over  the 
whole  empire,  especially  in  the  frontier  provinces,  in 
eastern  Gaul,  in  western  Germany,  in  all  the  Danubian 
provinces,  in  Dacia,  Numidia,  and  even  in  the  very 
seat  of  empire,  in  northern  and  central  Italy,  more 
especially  in  Rome.  Indeed,  from  the  time  of  Commo- 
dus,  the  first  of  the  Augusti  to  be  initiated  into  the 
mysteries  of  Mithra,  and  throughout  the  whole  of  the 
third  century,  Mithraism  was  distinguished  by  ever 
growing  imperial  favour,  until  finally  Aurelian, 
vindicating  Heliogabalus,  officially  instituted  the  cult 
of  Sol  Invictus,  which  seems  to  have  been  Mithraism 
Latinized.  For  several  generations  after  the  reign  of 
Aurelian  the  higher  bureaucracy  of  the  empire,  both 
civil  and  military,  may  be  said  to  have  been  adherents 
of  Mithraism  more  or  less  Latinized  so  as  to  form  a 
State  religion.  How  can  we  explain  the  favour  thus 
shown  by  the  new  absolute  monarchy  to  a  religion  the 
origins  of  which  might  naturally  have  made  it  an 
object  of  suspicion?  By  its  doctrine  of  the  State, 
Mithraism  taught  that  monarchs  reigned  by  divine 
grace,  and  as  such  received  from  Mithras  the  superior 
attributes  of  divinity,  which  by  his  omnipresent  influ- 
ence became  part  of  their  substance.^  The  principle 
of  legitimism  was  thus  transferred  from  the  senate  to 
God!  ' 

121.  Christianity.  Along  with  Mithraism  Chris- 
tianity had  also  made  great  strides  during  the  terrible 
crisis  of  the  third  century.  It  had  spread  over  all  the 
empire  and  in  all  classes;  had  penetrated  into  the 
armies,  the  senate,  and  the  court;  had  made  conquests 
among  rich  and  poor,  the  ignorant,  and  the  educated; 
had  already  produced  a  copious  and  profound  theology, 

'  Cumont,  Les  mysthes  de  Mithra,  Bruxelles,  1902,  p.  84. 


Christianity  379 

and  had  evolved  a  simple  but  solid  hierarchy  based  on 
rigorously  authoritarian  principles.  Every  church  was 
provided  with  a  numerous  clergy  composed  of  deacons 
who  conducted  the  services,  elders  (xpea^uTspoi)  who 
formed  an  executive  council,  and  a  bishop  (Ixtaxoxo?) 
who  was  the  head  and  director  of  the  church  with 
practically  absolute  powers.  The  bishop  was  elected 
for  life  by  the  clergy  with  the  assent  of  the  assembled 
faithful.  The  elders  and  the  deacons  were  chosen  by 
^he  bishop,  who,  at  the  time  of  which  we  are  now 
speaking,  was  already  a  person  of  importance  in  his 
city,  not  merely  because  in  every  city  the  Christians 
were  numerous,  but  because  the  Christian  body  had 
already  amassed  immense  riches  and  had  created 
that  marvellous  system  of  works  of  charity  and 
benevolence  which  was  the  great  novelty  it  introduced 
into  the  world  and  one  of  the  reasons  for  its  triumph. 
Everywhere  Christian  communities  provided  not  only 
for  the  expense  of  their  services  and  the  maintenance 
of  their  ministers  but  for  the  assistance  of  widows, 
orphans,  and  the  sick,  the  impotent,  the  old,  the  un- 
employed, for  the  succour  of  those  who  had  been 
condemned  in  the  service  of  God,  for  the  ransom  of 
prisoners  captured  by  the  barbarians,  for  the  building 
of  churches,  for  the  care  of  slaves,  for  the  burial  of  the 
poor,  for  hospitality  to  strangers  of  the  same  faith, 
and  for  subsidies  to  Christian  communities  which 
were  in  difficulties  or  in  danger. 

The  possessions  of  Christian  communities  were 
derived  in  great  part  from  gifts  made  to  them  by  rich 
members,  many  of  whom  during  their  lives  or  after 
their  deaths  transferred  to  them  the  whole  or  part  of 
their  fortunes.  The  church  was  therefore  collecting 
to  itself  in  a  gigantic  system  of  mortmain  the  property 


380   The  Great  Crisis  in  the   Third  Century 

of  a  section  of  the  moneyed  class  and  was  using  it 
partly  for  the  benefit  of  the  church  itself  and  partly 
for  the  benefit  of  the  poor  and  needy.  It  is  not 
difficult  to  imagine  what  a  formidable  instrument  of 
power  this  patrimony,  together  with  the  institutions  of 
public  assistance  and  beneficence  which  were  based 
on  it,  became  amid  the  general  misery  and  insecurity 
of  the  critical  days  of  the  third  century.  While  the 
elect  reached  Christianity  through  their  own  trials 
and  sorrows,  or  through  the  spectacle  of  the  griefs  of 
others,  or  through  disgust  with  a  disordered  and  con- 
taminated world  and  a  wild  aspiration  towards  peace 
and  happiness,  many  others  were  attracted  to  the  new 
faith  by  the  help  so  generously  given  by  the  Church  in 
cases  of  need.  If  faith  was  the  bond  between  the 
faithful  and  the  Church,  there  were  other  and  more 
material  bonds  which  efficaciously  reinforced  the 
power  and  authority  of  religion,  in  the  shape  of 
charities,  subsidies,  assistance,  ecclesiastical  offices, 
and  the  advantages  connected  therewith,  and,  last 
but  not  least,  the  management  and  methodical  de- 
velopment of  the  lands  recently  acquired  which  em- 
ployed an  ever  increasing  number  of  agents,  slaves, 
labourers,  and  farmers. 

Christianity,  therefore,  was  now  a  spiritual  and 
social  power,  but,  unlike  Mithraism,  it  enjoyed  no 
imperial  favour.  It  may  be  an  exaggeration  to  say — 
as  has  been  said — that  all  the  emperors  of  the  third 
century  were  against  the  Christians.  But  it  is  certain 
that  Christianity  had  to  endure  the  most  terrible 
persecutions  under  some  of  them,  such  as  Decius  and 
Valerian,  and  that  it  was  always  looked  upon  by 
the  authorities  with  a  hostile  distrust  which  contrasts 
with  the  favour  shown  to  Mithraism.     What  was  the 


Christianity  38 1 

reason  for  the  attitude  thus  adopted  by  the  empire 
towards  the  new  religion?  The  reason  was  the  very 
spirit  of  Christianity.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the 
empire  there  is  no  doubt  that  Christianity  was  a 
force  of  dissolution.  Little  by  little,  as  the  times 
became  more  troubled,  Christianity  took  courage  to 
maintain,  with  more  or  less  fervour  according  to  the 
various  sects,  that  a  Christian  should  seek  no  public 
office  or  honour  which  compromised  his  faith.  He 
must  not  maintain  temples,  arrange  the  games  of  the 
Circus  or  judge  or  prosecute  his  fellow  citizens.  He 
could  not,  therefore,  except  at  the  peril  of  his  soul, 
become  a  magistrate.  The  world  in  which  others 
lived  and  made  merry  was,  as  it  were,  an  inn  kept  by  a 
religion  and  a  civilization  which  Christ  had  cursed, 
and  neither  its  sorrows  nor  its  joys  were  to  be  shared 
by  the  perfect  Christian,  who,  on  the  contrary,  should 
long  only  to  leave,  as  soon  as  possible,  this  vale 
of  sin  and  tears.  Thus  the  duty  of  the  Christian 
was  to  destroy  the  empire.  If  he  did  not  do  so 
it  was — so  Tertullian  affirmed — because  the  Chris- 
tian was  thoroughly  permeated  with  the  doctrine  of 
mildness. 

The  effect  of  such  teaching  at  a  time  when  public 
offices  were  becoming  such  a  serious  and  danger- 
ous responsibility  can  easily  be  imagined.  Chris- 
tianity was  destroying  the  empire  by  the  weapon  of 
abstention  which  removed  from  its  control  and  its 
municipal  administration  a  great  number  of  intelligent, 
cultivated,  honest,  and  zealous  men  of  the  upper 
classes.  Many  citizens  whose  fortunes  destined  them 
to  the  management  of  public  affairs  preferred  to  give 
their  patrimony  to  the  Church  and  by  poverty  to 
escape  from  the  grave  responsibilities  of  power.    Others 


382  Tlic  Great  Crisis  in  the  Third  Century 

evaded  these  responsibilities  in  different  ways,  of 
which  some  were  deplored  even  by  the  Christian 
emperors. '  Celibacy  increased  to  a  greater  degree 
than  at  the  end  of  the  republic. 

But  the  army  suffered  even  more  than  the  civil 
services.  Even  in  the  second  century,  Christianity 
had  affirmed  that  "it  is  not  right  to  be  a  man  of  the 
sword,  for  the  Lord  declared  that  he  who  taketh  the 
sword  shall  perish  by  the  sword,"  and  that  "a  son 
of  peace,  whom  it  becometh  not  even  to  engage  in  a 
litigation,  should  still  less  take  part  in  a  battle,"  had 
affirmed  the  incompatibility  of  military  service  with 
Christianity,  for  "the  Lord  by  disarming  Peter  clearly 
affirmed  his  will  that  every  soldier  should  lay  down 
his  sword. "  It  followed  that  there  was  nothing  for  the 
Christian  soldier  but  "immediately  to  leave  the  army  " 
or  "to  resolve  to  endure  death  for  God."^  The  can- 
ons of  the  Church  of  Alexandria  absolutely  forbade 
volunteering,  which  was  the  foundation  of  the  Roman 
army,  and  authoritatively  laid  it  down  that  "it  was 
not  fitting  for  Christians  to  bear  arms."  Lactantius 
himself  puts  the  impossibility  of  a  Christian's  taking 
part  in  a  trial  for  a  capital  offence  on  the  same  footing 
as  his  taking  part  in  a  war,  for  it  is  "impossible  to 
allow  a  single  exception  to  the  divine  precept  'Thou 
shalt  not  kill.'"  St.  Augustine,  finally,  says  that  for 
the  Christian  it  is  indifferent  under  what  rule  he  lives 
provided  that  the  State  does  not  compel  him  to  commit 
impious  and  wicked  actions.^     It  is  not  difficult  to 

'  Cod.  Theod.,  xii.,  i,  104,  and  115. 

'  Tertull.,  De  corona,  ii.;  De  idol.,  19. 

•!  Aug.,  De  civil.  Dei.,  v.,  17.  On  the  relations  between  military- 
service  and  the  early  Christians,,  cf.  G.  Adami,  in  Bilychnis  (a 
review  of  religious  studies),  1913,  p.  169  ff. 


Christianity  383 

see  how  much  such  doctrines  must  have  weakened 
the  empire  in  its  defence  against  the  barbarians. 

On  the  accession  of  Diocletian  to  the  empire  the 
vital  elements  of  Roman  and  Greek  civilization  were 
alike  mortally  stricken.  The  whole  of  ancient  culture 
and  paganism,  the  moral  and  political  ideas  of  the 
ancient  world  were  in  their  death  throes.  The  social 
structure  of  the  empire  was  in  part  already  destroyed, 
in  part  seriously  menaced.  All  that  had  been  accom- 
plished by  centuries  of  Greek  and  Roman  labour  was 
tottering  to  its  fall,  some  of  it  destroyed  by  foreign 
enemies,  barbarian  and  Persian,  some  by  the  unbridled 
violence  of  the  legions,  some  by  Christianity,  which, 
in  order  to  make  room  for  its  loftier  morality  and  its 
nobler  conception  of  life,  had  to  uproot  the  foundations 
of  the  constituted  order  of  things.  Against  this  disso- 
lution, the  effect  at  the  same  time  of  destructive  and 
regenerative  forces,  the  empire  tried  to  react  by  push- 
ing forward  and  bringing  to  the  work  of  government 
its  ruder  populations  and  by  renewing  the  ancient 
eastern  religions  with  their  mysticism,  their  meta- 
physics, and  their  absolutist  spirit.  When  Diocletian 
donned  the  purple  the  Graeco-Roman  empire  of  Trajan 
and  of  Hadrian  was  already  almost  entirely  trans- 
formed into  an  Asiatico-barbarian  empire.  The 
strange  destiny  of  this  empire  which  sought  the  way 
of  salvation  for  the  future  in  a  distant  past,  in  the 
religious  and  monarchical  institutions  of  the  Asia 
which  had  flourished  before  Greece  and  Rome  attained 
their  marvellous  splendours,  will  form  the  subject 
of  the  last  part  of  this  book. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE  REFORMS  OF  DIOCLETIAN 
(284-305    A.D.) 

122.  Diocletian  and  Maximian:  the  Partition  of 
the  Empire,  284-293  A.D.  The  man  whom  the  legion 
had  elected  as  successor  to  Cams  was  also  a  Dal- 
matian like  Claudius  and  Aurelian,  but  his  birth  was 
even  more  obscure.  Some  went  so  far  as  to  say  that 
he  was  the  son  of  a  freedman.  He  had  been  in  the 
army  from  his  earliest  youth,  had  studied  in  the  school 
of  three  great  generals — Claudius,  Aurelian,  and  Pro- 
bus,  and,  though  a  barbarian,  he  was  a  great  man. 
Immediately  after  his  election  he  had  to  face  a  civil 
war  with  Carinus  who  in  the  meantime  had  been 
fighting  with  the  Jazigi.  Preparations  were  made  on 
both  sides  which  lasted  several  months,  and  in  the 
spring  of  285  the  two  armies  met  on  the  Morava.  It 
appears  that  Diocletian  would  have  been  beaten  if 
Carinus  had  not  been  murdered  by  one  of  his  own 
officers.  The  death  of  Carinus  led  to  the  triumph  of 
Diocletian,  but  the  new  civil  war  as  usual  brought 
about  a  crisis.  The  provinces,  left  to  themselves  for 
several  months,  no  longer  felt  the  controlling  hand 
of  the  government  and  immediately  began  to  proclaim 
new  pretenders. 

In  Gaul  broke  out  the  rebellion  of  the  Bagaudi,  an 
384 


Diocletian  and  Maximian  385 

insurrection  of  ruined  peasants  and  insolvent  debtors. 
The  barbarians  renewed  their  agitations  on  the 
frontier  and  their  piratical  raids  on  the  coasts  of 
Gaul  and  Britain.  Diocletian  soon  saw  that  one 
emperor  could  not  cope  with  everything,  and  shortly 
afterwards — in  the  second  half  of  285,  so  far  as  we 
can  make  out — he  siunmoned  Maximianus,  the  son 
of  a  Pannonian  farmer  and  one  of  his  companions 
in  arms,  from  the  neighbourhood  of  Sirmium  to  share 
with  him  the  fatigues  of  empire.  Maximian  was  a 
good  soldier  but  indifferently  educated,  from  which 
we  may  infer  that  Diocletian's  original  intention  was 
to  make  him  not  his  colleague,  but  a  faithful  and 
trusted  lieutenant.  As  a  matter  of  fact  Maximian 
did  not  receive  the  title  of  Augustus,  but  merely  that 
of  Caesar,  and  while,  in  order  to  give  a  religious  sanc- 
tion to  their  authority,  Diocletian  assumed  the 
appellation  of  Jovius,  Maximian  took  that  of  Her- 
culiiis.  The  relation  of  superior  and  inferior  was  thus 
maintained  even  in  the  divinities  under  whose  pro- 
tection the  two  heads  of  the  empire  were  placed. 

In  a  few  weeks,  however,  Maximian  stamped  out 
the  insurrection  of  the  Bagaudi,  and  this  piece  of  good 
fortune  altered  Diocletian's  plan.  In  286  he  conferred 
the  title  of  Augustus  on  Maximian  and  thus,  at  least 
in  theory,  made  the  powers  of  the  two  emperors  equal, 
though  he  did  not  break  the  poHtical  and  legislative 
unity  of  the  empire.  Each  of  the  two  Augusti  had 
his  own  army,  his  own  prastorian  prasfect,  and  his 
own  treasury,  though  perhaps  not  his  own  consilium 
principis.  But  the  laws  and  the  coinage  were  com- 
mon to  both  and  the  public  acts  bore  both  their 
names.  Diocletian's  came  first,  as  his  will  predom- 
inated in  all  things,  but  this  was  due  to  his  greater 

VOL.    II — 25 


3b'6  The  Reforms  of  Diocletian 

personal  authority  and  capacity  and  not  to  his  having 
a  greater  share  of  power.  Administration  and  defence 
questions  were  divided  between  the  emperors  but 
even  here  no  hard  and  fast  line  was  drawn  and,  if 
there  was  any  reason  for  doing  so,  neither  hesitated 
to  enter  the  territories  entrusted  to  the  other. 

In  a  word,  the  empire  was  ruled  no  longer  by  one 
emperor,  but  by  two,  just  as  there  had  been  for  so 
many  centuries  two  consuls  at  the  head  of  the  republic. 
The  reform  was  indeed  most  necessary.  Seizing  the 
opportunity  offered  by  the  revolt  of  the  Bagaudi,  the 
Heruli,  the  Burgundi,  and  the  Alamanni  had  recently 
crossed  the  Rhine  and,  what  was  worse,  Carausius  the 
commander  of  the  fleet,  who  had  been  entrusted  with 
the  pursuit  of  the  Saxon  and  Prankish  pirates,  had 
secretly  entered  into  an  understanding  with  them. 
Condemned  to  death  by  Maximian,  he  rebelled, 
asstmied  the  title  of  Augustus  in  Britain,  seized  that 
island  and  also  several  coast  towns  of  Gaul,  and 
created  a  powerful  armada  which  enabled  him  to 
defy  the  authority  of  the  two  legitimate  Augusti. 

Thus,  the  situation  of  the  empx;  in  the  East  re- 
mained as  precarious  as  it  had  been  for  the  previous 
thirty  years  since  the  days  of  Valerian,  that  is  since 
Rome  had  lost  Armenia,  her  most  powerful  bulwark 
against  the  new  empire  of  the  Sassanids.  Two  em- 
perors, therefore,  one  in  the  East  and  one  in  the 
West,  were  not  enough,  but  Maximian  successfully 
repulsed  the  new  Germanic  invasion  on  the  Rhine 
while  Diocletian  tried  to  recover  a  footing  in  Armenia 
rather  by  intrigue  than  by  force  of  arms.  The  mo- 
ment was  favourable.  The  Persian  empire  was  so 
much  debilitated  by  a  civil  war  that  King  Bahram  had 
sent  an  embassy  to  Diocletian  asking  for  his  friend- 


Appointment  of  Galerius  and  Constantius  387 

snip.  Armenia  was  weary  and  discontented  with  the 
Persian  domination.  Moreover,  Tiridates  the  legiti- 
mate heir  to  the  Armenian  crown  was  living  in  volim- 
tary  exile  at  Rome.  Diocletian  secretly  instigated 
and  assisted  Tiridates  to  recover  the  throne,  and,  a 
well-planned  coup  de  main  favoured  by  the  embarrass- 
ments of  the  King  of  Persia  and  the  discontent  in 
Armenia,  enabled  Tiridates  without  much  opposition 
to  take  possession  of  his  ancestral  realm.  Armenia 
was  once  more  under  Roman  influence,  and  the  King 
of  Persia,  not  being  in  a  position  to  take  the  field, 
had  to  accept  the  situation  and  recognize  the  accom- 
plished fact. 

123,  The  Tetrarchy  and  the  Appointment  of 
Galerius  and  Constantius  as  Caesars.  This  success 
improved  the  position  in  the  East  where,  however, 
a  new  enemy  appeared  in  the  shape  of  the  Saracens, 
who  swooped  down  from  their  retreats  in  the  Syro- 
Arabian  desert  to  pillage  Roman  territory  and  where 
Egypt,  for  reasons  which  remain  obscure,  was  in  a 
state  of  unrest.  There  was  no  corresponding  improve- 
ment in  the  West.  There  Maximian  had  not  suc- 
ceeded in  disposing  of  Carausius  who  had  raised  a 
powerful  force  of  Franks  and  Saxons.  New  agitations 
and  migrations  began  to  threaten  Germany  where 
Goths,  Vandals,  Gepidse,  and  Burgundians  were 
struggling  among  themselves.  In  eastern  Europe 
Sarmatia  was  again  active;  in  Nimiidia  and  Maure- 
tania  the  natives  were  once  more  in  a  ferment.  The 
two  Augusti  did  their  best  to  cope  with  all  these 
difficulties.  They  flew  from  one  end  of  the  empire  to 
the  other,  invested  this  and  that  general  with  full 
military  and  civil  powers  and  made  a  virtue  of 
necessity  by  recognizing  Carausius,  whom  they  could 


388  The  Reforms  of  Diocletian 

not  conquer,  as  a  third  Augustus.  But  this  difficult 
year  was  enough  to  convince  Diocletian  and  Maximian 
that  not  even  two  Augusti  were  enough,  and  in  293' 
Diocletian  decided  to  subdivide  the  administration 
still  further  by  appointing  two  new  official  collabora- 
tors of  inferor  rank  who  were  styled  Caesars.  In  this 
way  several  objects  were  secured.  The  defence  of 
the  frontiers  was  provided  for;  administration  was 
improved;  dangerous  ambitions  were  assuaged  and 
the  question  of  the  succession  which  had  so  long 
tormented  the  empire  was  solved  by  anticipation. 
On  the  death  of  one  of  the  Augusti  his  Cassar  w:.3  to 
have  his  place,  and  was  in  his  turn  to  nominate  a  new 
Caesar.  The  two  officers  raised  to  this  exalted  rank 
were  Galerius,  who  became  Diocletian's  Cassar,  and 
Constantius  who  was  the  Caesar  of  Maximian.  Gale- 
rius was  a  Dacian  of  a  coarse  but  energetic  disposition. 
Constantius,  sumamed  Chlorus  from  his  pallor,  was 
descended  on  his  mother's  side  from  Claudius  the 
Goth ;  he  was  therefore  a  man  of  good  family,  gentle 
and  cultivated — an  aristocrat  among  the  crowd  of 
parvenus  who  then  ruled  the  empire.  The  provinces 
were  distributed  among  the  four  emperors  as  foUov/s : 
Diocletian  kept  for  himself  the  far  eastern  part  of  the 
empire  including  Bithynia,  Arabia,  Lybia,  Egypt,  and 
Syria;  Galerius  had  Dalmatia,  Pannonia,  Moesia, 
Thrace,  Greece,  and  Asia  Minor;  Maximian  ruled 
Rome,  Italy,  Rhaetia,  Sicily,  Sardinia,  Spain,  and  the 
remainder  of  Africa;  Constantius,  Britain  and  Gaul. 
Conformably  to  the  reasons  which  had  led  to  their 
appointment  they  were  to  reside  not  at  Rome  but  on 
the  principal  boundary  lines  of  the  districts  assigned 

'  On  the  chronological  question  cj.  G.  Costa,  Diocletianus  in 
De  Ruggiero,  DizionQrio  epigrafico,  ii.,  p.  1805. 


The  New  Absolute  Monarchy         389 

to  each:  Diocletian  at  Nicomedia  in  Bithynia,  Gale- 
rius  at  Sirmium  in  Pannonia,  Maximian  at  Milan, 
and  Constantius  at  Treveri  in  Gaul. 

124.  The  New  Absolute  Monarchy  and  its  Reli- 
gious Character.  In  spite  of  these  arrangements  the 
empire  itself  was  not  divided  among  the  four  em- 
perors. Its  poHtical  and  legislative  unity  was  pre- 
served practically  intact  as  before.  The  two  Caesars 
were  subordinate  to  the  two  Augusti  and  between  the 
Augusti,  though  Diocletian  was  the  more  important, 
there  was  perfect  concord.  Thus,  though  legislation 
was  carried  out  in  the  name  of  the  four  sovereigns, 
the  inspiring  and  co-ordinating  mind  was  always 
Diocletian's.  His  reform,  however,  had  an  intimate 
and  religious  character  to  which  historians  have  not 
always  paid  sufficient  attention.  As  Maximian  had 
been  adopted  by  Diocletian  as  his  son,  so  the  two 
Ccesars  were  adopted  by  the  Augusti  and  received 
their  names.  Further  the  two  Caesars  repudiated  their 
wives  and  married  the  daughters  of  the  Augusti,  who 
had  adopted  them  as  sons.  And  as,  on  the  occasion 
of  their  being  respectively  raised  to  the  empire, 
Diocletian  had  taken  the  title  of  Jovius,  and  Maxi- 
mian the  subordinate  title  of  Hercidiiis,  so  now  the 
families  of  the  two  Caesars  came  to  be  styled  the  Jovii 
and  the  Herculii. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  in  these  arrangements 
concerning  the  supreme  power,  Diocletian  was  follow- 
ing the  great  example  of  the  Antonines  and  the 
principle  of  adoption  as  practised  in  the  second 
century,  hoping  to  restore  to  the  imperial  authority 
the  stability  which  it  had  then  enjoyed.  But  he 
adapted  the  ancient  principle  to  the  needs  of  the  time 
in  which  he  lived.    Thus  he  resolutely  laid  down  once 


390  The  Reforms  of  Diocletian 

and  for  all  the  principle  of  the  divinity  of  the  em- 
perors who  were  a  Diis  geniti  et  deorum  creatores.  The 
subject  peoples  and  the  army  swore  allegiance  in  their 
names  as  formerly  they  had  sworn  by  Jove  or  Hercules, 
and  the  deity  from  which  they  and  the  empire  drew 
strength  and  favour  was  no  other  than  the  Sun  God 
who  exercised  his  supernatural  influence  on  monarchs, 
the  Persian  Mithras  dispenser  of  thrones  and  empires.^ 

Moreover  this  new  divine  majesty  of  the  empire  was 
inculcated  on  its  subjects  by  outward  and  visible 
signs.  The  sovereign  wore  on  his  head  the  diadem  of 
the  great  oriental  kings — a  diadem  with  rays  like  those 
of  the  sun  by  whose  special  favour  he  was  illuminated. 
His  robes  and  his  sandals  glittered  with  precious  stones. 
He  was  no  longer,  like  Augustus,  Trajan,  or  Ves- 
pasian, a  mere  mortal,  accessible  any  day  at  any  time. 
In  conversing  with  him  one  had  to  observe  the  rules 
of  an  elaborate  etiquette,  and  when  admitted  to  his 
presence  one  had  to  make  reverences  which  amounted 
to  a  kind  of  adoration.  Oriental  absolutism  now 
finally  triumphed,  on  the  ruins  of  Greek  and  Roman 
culture  which  had  been  in  such  great  measure  de- 
stroyed by  the  great  crisis  of  the  third  century,  in  an 
empire  now  to  a  great  extent  both  populated  and 
governed  by  barbarians.  The  fact  that  such  great 
innovations  excited  no  opposition  except  that  which 
(as  we  shall  see)  the  Christians  offered  to  the  adora- 
tion of  the  emperors,  and  that  practically  all  of  them 
persisted,  demonstrates  how  thoroughly  the  age  of 
absolutism  was  prepared  during  the  profound  revolu- 
tion which  was  accomplished  in  the  third  century. 

125.  The  Reform  of  Provincial  Government.  The 
Roman  government  was  now  in  very  truth  an  abso- 

'  C.  I.  L.,  iii.,  4413. 


The  Reform  of  Provincial  Government  391 

lute  monarchy  of  the  Asiatic  type.  Diocletian  may 
have  been  careful  to  notify  to  the  senate  his  own  and 
subsequent  imperial  elections,  and  to  respect  many 
formalities  which  tradition  had  made  august.  But 
the  senate,  though  a  necessary  part  of  the  constitu- 
tion, was  treated  as  a  body  whose  advice  might  be 
listened  to  but  need  not  necessarily  be  followed.  It 
no  longer  had  any  provinces  to  administer,  for  all  had 
passed  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  emperors.  It  was 
excluded  from  the  direction  of  affairs,  its  place  being 
taken  by  the  consistorium  principis,  a  new  body  which, 
like  the  ancient  senate,  examined  questions  of  a  legis- 
lative character  and  was  composed  of  all  the  great 
officers  of  State. 

By  a  still  more  important  reform  Diocletian  finally 
severed  the  civil  from  the  military  authority.  Every 
province  was  henceforth  to  have  a  presses,  or  civil 
governor*  in  addition  to  a  dux  or  military  governor. 
This  measure  which  may  well  seem  in  contradiction 
with  the  financial  necessities  of  the  empire,  for  while 
these  imposed  economy  on  the  imperial  treasury  the 
partition  of  the  administration  demanded  a  notable 
increase  of  expenditure.  But  the  political  necessities 
which  urged  Diocletian  to  take  this  step  were  too 
strong  to  allow  him  to  take  account  of  financial 
considerations.  On  the  one  hand,  by  separating  the 
civil  from  the  military  authority,  he  aimed  at  weaken- 
ing both  the  prases  and  the  dux  and  so  making  more 
difficult  the  proclamations  of  provincial  governors  as 
emperors  which  had  been  the  curse  of  the  third  cen- 
tury. On  the  other,  he  was  endeavouring  to  com- 
pensate for  the  deficiencies  of  the  military  element 
which,  being  recruited  among  the  ruder  peoples,  did 
not  possess  the  necessary  qualities  for  governing  the 


392  The  Reforms  of  Diocletian 

provinces  of  an  empire  which,  however  decadent,  was 

yet  the  inheritor  of  an  ancient  tradition  of  civilization. 
Furthermore,  there  was  a  tendency  to  what  we  may 
call  the  breaking  up  of  the  provinces.  To  secure  the 
better  administration  of  the  empire  and  to  provide 
opportunities  of  promotion  for  his  officials,  Diocle- 
tian divided  and  subdivided  the  provinces  as  none  of 
his  predecessors  had  done.  Thus  we  know  that  in 
the  year  297  there  were  96  civil  governorships  in  the 
provinces  instead  of  57,  as  had  been  the  case  at  the 
time  of  his  accession.  At  the  same  time,  in  order  to 
prevent  this  subdivision  of  the  provinces  from  weak- 
ening the  empire  and  the  power  of  the  central  author- 
ity, he  created  the  system  of  "dioceses."  The  diocese 
had  hitherto  been  a  financial  or  judicial  subdivision  of 
a  province.  Under  Diocletian  it  became  a  group  of 
several  provinces  in  one  inclusive  district  placed  under 
the  control  of  a  new  magistrate  the  vicarius.  The 
dioceses  were  twelve  in  number:  five  in  the  East, 
styled  Oriens,  Pontica,  Asiana,  Thracia,  and  Mcesia, 
and  seven  in  the  West,  which  were  known  as  Germania, 
Gallia,  Britannia,  Viennensis,  Italia,  Hispania,  and 
Africa. 

Thus  henceforth,  there  were  to  be  at  the  head  of  the 
State  two  Augusti  with  two  CcEsars  as  their  subor- 
dinates. Immediately  under  these  came  the  twelve 
vicarii,  and  with  these  on  an  equal  footing  the  pro- 
consuls who  were  governors  of  certain  specially 
privileged  provinces.  Below  these  again  were  the 
presides,  or,  in  some  cases,  the  consulares  or  correc- 
tores  as  the  governors  of  newly  conquered  provinces 
were  variously  styled.  Side  by  side  with  this  civil 
hierarchy  stood  the  duces,  with  territorial  powers 
limited  to  military  affairs  and  not  necessarily  coter- 


Military  and  Financial  Reform       393 

minous  with  the  boundaries  of  the  diocese  or  the 
province. 

What  place  did  Italy  occupy  in  this  new  system? 
Italy  was  now  no  more  than  one  province  among  other 
provinces,  subject  once  more,  as  before  the  war  with 
Perseus,  to  the  land  tax  except  for  one  last  privileged 
comer,  the  Roman  Campagna  within  a  circuit  of  a 
hundred  miles  from  the  walls  of  the  city.  Thus  fiscal 
uniformity  between  the  provinces  and  Italy  was 
complete.  Italy,  moreover,  was  itself  divided  up  into 
provinces,  the  names  of  which  are  known  to  us,  and 
the  whole  peninsula  formed  a  diocese  governed  not 
as  in  other  cases,  by  one  vicarius  but  by  two. 

126.  Military  and  Financial  Reform.  Diocletian 
had  a  great  organizing  talent  and  he  did  not  put  any 
of  his  reforms  in  practice  without  providing  for  the 
reactions  which  it  was  likely  to  cause,  or  without  con- 
ceiving and  carrying  out  all  the  consequential  changes 
that  became  necessary.  The  increased  nimiber  of 
heads  of  State,  their  removal  to  their  strategicall}'- 
appropriate  residences,  and  the  separation  of  the 
militar}^  from  the  civil  power  were  not  in  themselves 
sufficient  to  secure  the  more  efficient  defence  of  the 
empire.  It  was  necessary  to  quadruplicate  the  im- 
perial bodyguard,  to  add  to  the  old  praetorians  new 
forces  called  milites  Palatini  and  Comitatenses,  and 
generally  to  increase  the  effectives  of  the  army. 
Diocletian,  therefore,  increased  his  forces  by  about  a 
third — from  300,000  to  500,000  men.'  He  increased 
the  number  of  officers  in  even  greater  proportion, 
for  in  order  to  keep  each  legion  better  in  hand 
and  to  counterbalance  the  powers  of  the  duces,  the 

'  Cf.  G.  Costa,  in  De  Ruggieri,  Dizionario  epigrafico,  ii.,  p. 
1848. 


394  ^^  Reforms  of  Diocletian 

number  of  men  in  the  ranks  of  each  was  reduced, 
while  the  number  of  miHtary  tribunes  was  greatly 
increased. 

But  the  augmentation  of  the  staff  of  the  central 
provincial  bureaucracies  and  of  the  armies  implied 
an  increase  of  expenditure.  For  this  also  Diocletian 
made  provision  with  much  energy  and  ingenuity. 
He  began  by  decreeing  a  general  revaluation  of  lands 
— a  new  cadastral  survey  as  we  should  now  call  it — 
and  as  this  was  completed  he  gradually  introduced  a 
new  system  of  taxation  which  was  imiform  for  all  the 
provinces  but  which  took  strict  account  of  the  quality 
of  the  land  and  of  its  productiveness.  With  this 
object,  he  introduced  a  new  fiscal  imit  denominated 
according  to  locality  iugum,  caput,  millena,  centuria, 
which  included  lands  of  various  kinds  and  extent, 
but  which  were  of  identical  value  and  were  required 
to  provide  the  same  contribution.  Thus,  for  example, 
five  iugera  of  vineyard  or  twenty  iugera  of  cultivable 
land  of  the  first  quality  made  up  a  iugum,  while  for 
the  same  unit  forty  iugera  of  the  second  and  sixty 
iugera  of  the  third  quality  were  required,  corre- 
spondingly more  iugera  being  specified  in  the  case  of 
mountainous  land  and  correspondingly  fewer  in  the 
case  of  level  plots.'  The  method  of  collection  was 
regulated  with  great  care.  The  sum  assessed  by  the 
State  on  a  complete  fiscal  unit  comprehending  a  cer- 
tain nimiber  of  iuga  was  notified  to  the  decuriones 
(the  member  of  the  little  senate  belonging  to  each 
city),  who  divided  up  the  amount  among  the  proprie- 

'  This  information  comes  from  a  collection  of  laws  of  Syriac 
origin  which  belongs  to  the  year  501,  but  which  refers  to  Dio- 
cletian's reforms.  CJ.  Bruns-Sachau,  Syrisch-romisches  Rechts- 
buch  aus  dem  fiinften,  Jahrhundert,  Leipzig,  1880, 


The  Great  Reform  of  the  Coinage     395 

tors  and  the  tenants  of  the  public  land  (possessores) , 
excluding  those  who  held  insignificant  portions,  saw 
that  it  was  collected  and  were  responsible  for  paying 
it  over  to  the  Treasury.  The  system  of  tribute  was 
thus  perfect  and  the  certainty  that  it  would  be  re- 
ceived by  the  State  placed  beyond  a  doubt.  But 
when  hard  times  came  it  ended  by  ruining  a  whole 
social  class,  those,  that  is  to  say,  who  were  in  easy 
circumstances,  and  the  mtmicipal  administration 
suffered  severely,  for  no  one  could  be  found  who 
would  be  responsible  for  it. 

127.  The  Great  Reform  of  the  Coinage.  Shortly 
after  these  reforms  had  been  carried  out  Diocletian 
turned  his  attention  to  the  economic  cancer  which  had 
played  havoc  in  the  third  century — the  forced  circula- 
tion of  a  debased  coinage.  He  established  the  aureus 
at  Ve  0  of  the  hbra  {i.e.  at  5.45  grammes).  He  fixed  the 
argenteus  minutulus  (now  substituted  for  the  old 
denarius)  at  V96  of  the  libra  {i.e.  at  3.40  grammes) 
which  was  the  average  weight  of  the  denarius  neron- 
ianus  and,  as  the  proportion  of  alloy  in  each  case  was 
very  small,  their  intrinsic  values  were  respectively 
17.75  lire  ($3.43)  and  i  Hra  ($.193).  The  antonianus 
disappeared.  As  however  it  was  impossible  to  elimi- 
nate from  daily  transactions  the  use  of  the  de- 
preciated denarius  to  which  the  public  had  been 
accustomed  since  the  days  of  the  republic,  Diocletian 
issued  new  denarii  of  the  same  shape  and  weight  as 
the  old,  but  of  p\ire  bronze,  and  fixed  their  value  at 
1/50,000  of  the  golden  libra  which  was  equivalent  to 
.02  lire  ($.00386). 

This  great  reform  was  completed  in  301,  and 
Diocletian  took  in  hand  a  supplementary  measure  on 
a  grandiose  scale  which  is  unique  in  history.    This  was 


396  The  Reforms  of  Diocletian 

his  edictum  de  pretiis  rerum  venalium^  in  which  he 
fixed  in  minute  detail  maximum  prices  for  all  agri- 
cultural and  industrial  products  throughout  the  em- 
pire. The  object  of  this  was  to  check  the  enormous 
increase  in  the  price  of  commodities,  the  chief  cause 
of  which  had  hitherto  been  the  bad  currency  and 
which  had  been  a  cause  of  loss  to  private  persons  but 
had  more  especially  aggravated  the  expense  of  pro- 
viding for  the  armies.  Something  of  the  sort  had 
already  been  carried  out  in  indi^'idual  cases  and  may 
be  hereafter,  but  so  universal  and  rigorous  a  regula- 
tion had  never  yet  been  and  probably  will  never  again 
be  seen.  Diocletian's  edict  from  the  minuteness  and 
variety  of  its  provisions  is  indeed  a  unique  monument 
of  economic  legislation.  It  is  all  the  more  to  be 
regretted  that  we  know  so  little  of  the  circumstances 
of  its  composition  and  the  effects  that  it  produced. 

128.  The  Great  Persian  War  (296-298  A.D.). 
Thus  the  activity  of  the  new  government  of  the  two 
Augusti  was  remarkable  in  the  sphere  of  internal 
reform.  It  was  scarcely  less  notable  in  military 
affairs.  They  succeeded  in  re-establishing  the  unity 
of  the  empire  by  recovering  Britain.  Carausius  had 
been  killed  by  one  of  his  officers,  a  certain  Allectus 
who  flattered  himself  that  he  would  take  his  place, 
but  who  was  shortly  afterwards  defeated  and  also 
slain  (296).  An  insurrection  at  Alexandria,  where  it 
appears  that  an  attempt  was  made  to  set  up  a  pre- 
tender against  the  rightful  emperors,  was  promptly 
dealt  with  and  very  rapidly  put  down  (296).  On  the 
other  hand  great  difficulties  had  arisen  with  Persia. 
In  294  Narsetes  or  Narseus  (Narsehi)  had  succeeded 
to  the  throne  of  that  country.     Under  his  rule  there 

^  Given  in  C.  I.  L.,  iii.,  pp.  191 1-53;  2208-11. 


The  Great  Persian  War  397 

came  a  reaction  against  the  lax  policy  of  his  pre- 
decessor, and  in  296  he  profited  by  the  circumstance 
that  Galerius  was  in  Pannonia  and  Diocletian  much 
occupied  in  Egypt  to  throw  himself  on  Armenia  and 
threaten  Syria  at  the  same  time. 

Diocletian  immediately  recalled  Galerius  and  sent 
him  against  the  Persians,  but  that  impetuous  soldier 
made  a  serious  blunder  by  attacking  the  enemy  in  the 
same  region  in  which  three  centuries  and  a  half 
previously,  the  legions  of  Crassus  had  found  their 
grave,  and  he  was  defeated.  The  great  emperor  had 
to  reconstruct  the  ruined  army  chiefly  by  enrolling 
barbarians  from  the  West,  more  especially  Goths  and 
Dacians,  and  to  repeat  the  attempt  from  another 
direction  by  invading  the  enemy's  country  through 
the  mountains  of  Armenia.  The  new  army  was  also 
entrusted  to  Galerius  who  was  anxious  to  wipe  out  his 
previous  disaster,  and  this  time  he  was  successful. 
By  an  impetuous  night  attack  he  not  only  overthrew 
the  Persian  camp  but  captured  the  entire  royal  family. 
Narsetes  alone  was  able,  though  wounded,  to  save 
himself  by  flight.  Emboldened  by  this  exploit  Gale- 
rius already  dreamed  of  conquering  Persia,  and  re- 
peating the  achievement  of  Alexander.  But  the  bar- 
barians were  once  more  seriously  threatening  the 
borders  of  the  empire.  In  this  very  year  (297) 
Constantius  had  to  go  to  Britain,  and  while  the  Ger- 
mans, encouraged  by  his  absence,  were  threatening 
Gaul,  Maximian  was  forced  to  leave  for  Africa  where 
a  new  rebellion  had  broken  out.  Diocletian,  therefore, 
was  disposed  to  make  peace,  and  in  the  early  part  of 
298  a  treaty  was  concluded  which  was  a  new  triumph 
for  Roman  diplomacy.  The  whole  of  Mesopotamia 
which  had  at  one  time  been  conquered  by  Septimius 


398  The  Reforms  of  Diocletian 

Severus  was  again  restored  to  the  empire,  and,  in 
addition,  the  Persian  king  ceded  five  Armenian  pro- 
vinces in  the  upper  valley  of  the  Tigris  which  Sapor 
I.  had  conquered.  Our  sources  of  information  dis- 
agree as  to  what  these  actually  were. '  Tiridates  was 
confirmed  in  possession  of  Armenia  as  far  as  Zinta  in 
Media  Atropatene,  and  Iberia  (the  Georgia  of  today) 
became  a  vassal  State  no  longer  of  Persia  but  of  Rome. 
Finally  Diocletian  managed  that  all  the  trade  of  Persia 
with  Rome  should  pass  through  Nisibis,  an  arrange- 
ment which  completed  and  greatly  simplified  the  excise 
system  of  the  empire.  In  this  way  Rome  secured 
an  excellent  strategic  frontier,  by  which  the  defence  of 
Asia  Minor  and  Syria  would  be  very  much  strengthened, 
and  some  extremely  useful  alliances  in  the  Caucasus. 
In  a  word  a  peace  had  been  obtained  practically 
without  fighting  which  was   to  last  for  forty  years. 

129.  The  Persecution  of  the  Christians  (303  A.D.). 
The  great  war  with  Persia  was  followed  by  several 
years  of  profound  peace.  Now  that  the  finer  part  of 
the  Graeco-Roman  intellectual  tradition,  and  with  it 
the  republican  spirit,  had  been  destroyed,  the  empire 
seemed  to  have  reached  a  kind  of  equilibrium  in 
oriental  absolutism,  in  the  sentiments,  the  ideas,  and 
the  institutions  by  which  Persia,  Assyria,  Egypt,  and 
all  the  great  empires  of  Asia  had  been  governed.  This 
half  barbarous, half  Asiatic  empire  with  deified  generals 
at  its  head  appeared  to  have  triumphed,  and  who 
knows  what  might  have  been  the  fate  of  the  world, 
and  of  Europe  in  particular,  if  in  place  of  the  Grasco- 
Roman  tradition  now  almost  exhausted,  there  had 
not  arisen  a  new  force  in  the  shape  of  Christianity 
to  combat  theocratic  absolutism  ?     Though  the  whole 

'  C/.  Amm.  Marc,  xxv.,  79;  F.  H.  Gr.,  iv.,  p.  189. 


Tlie  Persecution  of  the  Christians     399 

empire  acquiesced  in  the  adoration  of  the  persons  of 
the  emperors  as  divine  beings  and  accepted  the  new 
religious  forms  in  which  the  sinking  State  sought  new 
support  for  its  authority,  the  Christians  rebelled. 
They  could  not  worship  either  Mithras  or  the  Sun  or 
the  emperors  who  represented  these  divinities  on  earth, 
but  only  God  whose  Son  had  become  a  man  in  order  to 
take  away  the  sin  of  the  world.  And  Christianity  was 
now  so  widespread  and  so  powerful  that  the  barbaric 
Asiatic  empire  ended  by  seeing  in  it  the  mortal  enemy 
which  in  fact  it  was.  The  persecution  of  the  Christians 
was  the  logical  conclusion  of  the  whole  political  system 
of  Diocletian,  for  the  mere  fact  of  being  a  Christian 
now  meant  a  refusal  to  recognize  the  new  regime. 

The  first  anti-Christian  edict  was  that  of  Febru- 
ary 24,  303.  It  prescribed  the  destruction  of  Christian 
churches  and  books,  the  breaking  up  of  Christian 
communities  and  the  confiscation  of  their  property, 
the  prohibition  of  meetings  of  the  faithful  and  their 
exclusion  from  all  public  offices.  The  edict  was  rela- 
tively mild,  for  it  did  not  threaten  Christians  with  the 
punishment  of  death ;  but  they  were  now  too  numerous 
to  be  all  zealous  observers  of  the  moral  precept  re- 
quiring that  the  other  cheek  should  be  offered  to  the 
smiter.  This  time  they  appear  to  have  replied  to 
violence  with  violence,  to  have  set  fire  to  the  imperial 
palace  at  Nicomedia  and  to  have  formed  a  conspiracy 
against  the  emperors  on  a  very  large  scale.  In  Syria, 
moreover,  both  in  the  army  and  among  the  civil 
authorities,  there  broke  out  an  actual  rebellion  and 
an  anti-dynastic  movement/     Even  in  the  face  of 

'  C/.  'E\xs.,Hist.  eccles.,  will.,  2  fif.  The  author  very  naturally 
relieves  the  Christians  of  all  responsibility.  The  facts,  however, 
speak  for  themselves. 


400  The  Reforms  of  Diocletian 

resistance  of  this  kind  Diocletian  hesitated  to  shed 
blood.  He  contented  himself  with  a  second  edict 
whereby  the  bishops,  priests,  and  deacons  who  refused 
to  deliver  up  their  sacred  books  were  to  be  imprisoned. 
This  edict  was  followed  by  a  third  which  in  a  sense 
was  a  mitigation  of  its  predecessors.  On  the  occasion 
of  the  great  public  festival  of  the  Vicennalia  celebrat-  . 
ing  the  twentieth  anniversary  of  the  accession  of  the 
two  Augusti  a  general  amnesty  had  been  proclaimed. 
Of  the  Christian  prisoners  all  were  to  be  set  at  liberty 
who  would  openly  return  to  the  old  religion.  The 
rest  were  to  be  excluded  from  this  favour,  and,  indeed, 
as  a  punishment  for  their  insane  obstinacy,  they  were 
to  be  more  harshly  treated. 

These  edicts  are  the  most  epoch-making  documents 
in  the  history  of  the  power  of  Christianity.  The 
reluctance  of  Diocletian  to  take  severe  measures 
against  an  enemy  now  known  to  be  too  numerous  and 
too  strong  to  be  put  down  is  obvious.  As  always 
happens  when  a  State  finds  itself  in  the  presence  of  a 
danger  with  which  it  is  not  strong  enough  to  cope, 
Diocletian  had  recourse  to  half  measures  which,  then 
as  in  other  cases,  merely  aggravated  the  evil.  The 
resistance  of  the  Christians  became  more  bitter  and 
the  emperor  was  compelled  to  resort  to  severities 
from  which  at  first  he  had  abstained.  Towards  the 
end  of  303-304,  Diocletian  fell  seriously  ill,  and  the 
government  of  the  East  was  assumed  by  Galerius. 
It  was  then  that  the  more  decisive  and  uncompro- 
mising policy  prevailed  and  Galerius  and  his  colleague* 

'  The  Christian  tradition  (Lact.,  De  mart,  pers.,  xv.,4-5)  throws 
the  whole  responsibility  on  the  two  princes  of  the  East  who  are 
said  not  to  have  consulted  their  colleagues.  This  seems  very 
improbable. 


The  Ahdicatio7i  of  the  August?        401 

agreed  upon  the  final  edict,  the  most  Draconian  whicli 
Diocletian  had  been  prevailed  upon  to  sign.  This 
edict  made  the  obligation  to  sacrifice  to  the  Gods 
universal  and  denounced  the  severest  penalties  against 
all  who  refused  to  comply. 

This  persecution  lasted  eight  years ;  it  was  on  a  great 
scale  and,  as  a  whole,  vigorous,  though  not  so  much  so 
as  ecclesiastical  tradition  would  have  us  believe.  It 
was  unequal  and  the  severity  with  which  it  was  applied 
varied  according  to  the  district  and  the  temperaments 
of  the  C^sars  and  the  Augusti.  Constantius  Chlorus, 
for  example,  did  not  put  the  persecuting  edicts  in  force, 
no  doubt  because  the  Christian  element  at  his  court 
was  too  powerful  and  highly  favoured. 

130.  The  Abdication  of  the  Augusti  (305  A.D.). 
In  304  Diocletian  reached  the  twentieth  year  of  his 
reign  and,  though  he  was  not  yet  sixty,  he  was  weary. 
For  years  he  had  been  meditating  retirement  from 
his  long  spell  of  government,  a  retirement  from  which 
he  could  serenely  contemplate  the  various  develop- 
ment of  his  reforms  without  having  to  direct  it  in 
person.  For  long  too  he  had  been  building  for  himself 
at  Salona  in  his  native  Dalmatia  a  retreat  where  he 
could  rest  in  his  declining  years.  Moreover  it  was  his 
wish  that  in  his  retirement  from  public  affairs  he 
should  not  be  alone,  and  that  Maximian,  the  faithful 
companion  of  his  labours  should  go  with  him.  It 
even  appears  that  he  had  made  Maximian  swear  to 
him  that  he  would  do  so.  The  great  moment  had 
come  at  last.  On  May  i,  305,  on  a  hill  rising  gently 
from  the  plain  three  miles  from  Nicomedia  at  the 
foot  of  a  column  bearing  a  statue  of  Jupiter,  on  the 
spot  where  he  had  invested  Galerius  with  the  purple, 
surrounded  by  the  great  officers  of  the  empire  and  the 

VOL.    II 26 


402  The  Reforms  of  Diocletian 

highest  officers  of  the  army,  Diocletian  laid  down  his 
diadem  and  his  sceptre  and  put  off  his  imperial  robes, 
calling  on  Galerius  to  succeed  him  and  giving  him  a 
Caesar  in  his  turn  in  the  person  of  Maximinus  Daius, 
one  of  the  protectores.  The  same  scene  was  repeated 
on  the  same  day,  and  perhaps  at  the  same  hour,  at 
Milan  where  Maximian  yielded  his  throne  to  Con- 
stantius  and  placed  the  Caesarian  purple  on  the  shoul- 
ders of  Severus,  another  officer. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

CONSTANTINE  THE   GREAT   (306-337  A.D.) 

131.  The  New  Civil  War  (305-314  A.D.).  A  year 
had  not  elapsed  from  the  abdication  of  Diocletian 
and  Maximian,  when  Constantius  Chlorus  died  in 
Britain.  His  death  was  enough  to  bring  about  the 
downfall  of  the  tetrarchy.  Diocletian,  not  wishing  to 
establish  the  principle  of  hereditary  succession,  had 
excluded  from  sharing  in  the  empire  both  Constantine 
son  of  Constantius  and  Maxentius  son  of  Maximian. 
But  Constantine  was  a  young  man  of  intelligence  and 
energy,  and  was  moreover  very  ambitious,  so  that, 
immediately  after  the  death  of  Constantius,  he  caused 
himself  to  be  proclaimed  Caesar  by  his  soldiers  at  Ebor- 
acum  (York)  (July  25, 306) . '  This  bold  stroke  was  suc- 
cessful. In  order  to  avoid  a  civil  war  Galerius,  the  elder 
and  more  powerful  of  the  two  Augusti,  accepted  the 
fait  accompli  by  appointing  Constantine  a  Cassar  and 
promoting  Severus  to  the  rank  of  Augustus.  But  the 
civil  war  which  Galerius  hoped  to  avert  in  Gaul  soon 
broke  out  in  a  graver  form  in  Italy. 

Rome,  the  ancient  capital,  had  taken  very  ill  her 

'  It  appears  that,  before  the  abdication  of  the  two  Augusti, 
Constantine  had  received  assurances  that  he  would  be  promoted 
to  the  post  of  one  of  the  two  Caesars  in  the  first  vacancy.  This 
promise  would  justify  in  part  his  proclamation  in  306.  Cf.  Lact., 
De  mort.  per  sec,  18-19. 

403 


(404 


Coiistantine  the  Great 


reduction  to  the  rank  of  a  provincial  town,  and  the 
populace  and  the  [)raDtorian  guard,  on  the  pretext  of 
a  new  census  decreed  by  Galejius,  rosa. in. rebellion 
and  proclaimed  Maxentius,  son  of  Maximian,  Augus- 
tus. Maxentius  was  living  not  far  from  the  city  and, 
since  Constantine  had  been  raised  to  the  empire  he  too 
wished  to  be  made  a  Caesar  (October  27,  306).  To 
consolidate  his  authority  he  recalled  his  father  Maxim- 
ian, who  was  by  no  means  contented  in  his  retirement, 
and  invested  him  also  with  the  imperial  title.  The 
fragile  system  of  the  tetrarchy  was  shattered.  The 
empire  had  six  emperors,  four  Augusti  and  two  Caesars ! 
Galerius  charged  Severus  with  the  task  of  crushing 
the  Italian  revolt,  but  Maximian's  name  made  him 
very  formidable  on  his  return  to  power.  The  troops 
of  Severus  refused  to  fight  against  their  old  general 
and  preferred  to  go  over  to  his  camp.  Severus  fled 
and  at  Ravenna  resigned  to  Maximian  the  purple 
which   the   latter  had   formerly  bestowed  upon  him 

(307)- 

A  second  attempt  against  Maxentius  made  by 
Galerius  in  person  had  no  better  success.  All  Italy 
had  declared  for  the  cause  of  Rome  and  of  Maxentius. 
The  cities  closed  their  gates  against  Galerius,  who 
deemed  it  unwise  to  lay  siege  to  Rome  and  left  the 
peninsula,  inviting  Diocletian  himself  to  meet  him 
at  Carnuntum  in  Pannonia  in  order  that  by  his  advice 
and  authority  he  might  help  to  discover  a  solution  of 
the  difficulty.  Nothing  could  more  clearly  show  the 
prestige  which  Diocletian  retained  even  in  his  retire- 
ment. The  conference  at  Carnuntum  was  joined 
by  Maximian  who  had  already  quarrelled  with  his  son 
Maxentius  because  after  his  successes  he  had  tried 
to  exercise  an  authority  over  his  father  which  was 


The  New  Civil  War  405 

much  resented.  But  neither  Galerius  nor  Maximian 
could  persuade  Diocletian  to  resume  the  imperial  dig- 
nity, and  the  deliberations  of  the  conference  resulted 
in  the  decision  that  for  Severus  should  be  substituted 
another  Augustus  in  the  person  of  Licinianus  Licinius, 
an  elderly  man  and  an  old  comrade  of  Galerius,  who 
was  to  be  governor  of  Illyricum  (November,  307). 
Maximian  was  to  return  to  private  life  and  Maxentius 
was  excluded  from  the  empire. 

The  cure  was  worse  than  the  disease.  Maxentius 
maintained  himself  in  Italy.  Maximian  did  not  lay 
down  the  purple  but  sought  to  make  common  cause 
with  Constantine,  to  whom  he  gave  in  marriage  his 
daughter  Fausta,  hoping  to  find  in  him  the  support 
for  his  ambitious  schemes  which  Maxentius  had 
withheld.  The  appointment  of  Licinius  created  new 
difficulties.  Licinius  had  risen  to  the  highest  place  in 
the  empire  without  having  passed  through  the  inter- 
mediate grade  of  Cassar,  thus  being  promoted  over  the 
heads  of  Maximinus  Daius  and  Constantine.  The 
former  at  once  had  himself  proclaimed  Augustus  by 
his  troops;  the  latter  demanded  from  Galerius  a 
similar  investiture  for  himself.  Early  in  308,  there- 
fore, the  empire  had  four  Augusti  besides  Maxentius 
and  Maximian,  and,  what  was  more,  these  Augusti 
were  no  longer  in  any  relation  of  subordination  to  each 
other.  Diocletian's  tetrarchy  had  fallen,  and  once 
more  the  uncertainty  of  the  principle  of  succession  to 
the  supreme  office — the  mortal  malady  which  since  the 
days  of  Augustus  had  given  the  empire  no  rest — 
generated  a  crisis.  The  first  victim  was  Maximian, 
the  old  collaborator  of  Diocletian,  who  disappeared  in 
tragic  and  obscure  circumstances.  It  was  said  that  he 
conspired   against   his   son-in-law;   it   is   certain   that 


4o6  )  Constantine  the  Great 


Constantine  had  him  arrested  at  Massilia  and  that 
two  years  later  he  caused  him  to  be  finally  removed 

(310)- 

In  the  midst  of  these  disorders  and  intrigues  three 
of  the  four  legitimate  emperors,  Galerius,  Constantine, 
J  and  Licinius  promulgated  an  edict  in  the  year  311 
which  suspended  the  persecution  of  the  Christians.* 
How  are  we  to  explain  this  sudden  change  of  policy? 
It  will  be  best  regarded  not  so  much  as  a  retractation 
as  a  political  measure  suggested  by  the  dangerous 
internal  situation  of  the  empire.  It  was  clear  that 
the  balance  of  power  between  the  five  Augusti,  among 
whom  there  was  no  preponderating  authority,  was 
unstable,  and  that  there  might  be  civil  war  at 
any  moment.  But  Maxentius  and  Maximinus  Daius 
were  bound  to  the  old  pagan  cult  and  were  against 
the  Christians.  Maximinus  Daius  was  in  fact  en- 
deavouring to  organize  paganism  on  a  more  solid 
basis.'  It  is  probable  therefore  that  by  their  decree 
the  other  Augusti  were  trying  to  secure  the  very 
powerful  support  of  the  Christian  element  for  them- 
selves with  a  view  to  future  eventualities.  In  other 
words  the  Christians  were  profiting  by  the  weakening 
of  the  imperial  authority  v/hich  had  come  about  owing 
to  the  political  crisis. 

The  decree  of  3 1 1 ,  in  fact,  was  one  of  many  premoni- 
tory symptoms  of  a  new  civil  war.  The  outbreak 
seemed  to  have  come  when  Galerius  died  shortly 
after  the  promulgation  of  the  edict.  Licinius  and 
Maximinus  appeared  to  be  on  the  point  of  contending 
by  force  of  arms  for  the  succession.  But  after  a 
little  while  they  came  to  terms,  the  latter  taking  Asia 
Minor,  Syria,  and  Egypt,  and  the  former  the  remaining 

'  Euseb.,  H.  eccL,  viii.,  17,  i  flF.;  Lact.,  De  mort.,  34. 


The  New  Civil  War  407 

oriental  provinces  from  the  Bosphorus  to  the  Adriatic. 
It  was  not  in  the  East  but  in  Europe  that  the  great 
and  imminent  conflagration  was  destined  to  break  out. 
For  several  years  at  least  Constantine,  who  had  al- 
ready distinguished  himself  by  successful  campaigns 
against  the  Franks  and  the  Alamanni,  had  been  fixing 
an  attentive  eye  on  the  affairs  of  Italy.  Maxentius 
was  consolidating  his  power  there  and  was  preparing 
great  forces,  intended — it  was  said — to  wrest  Gaul 
from  Constantine  and  Illyria  from  Licinius.  He 
was  also  making  approaches  to  Maximin  who,  on 
the  other  hand,  was  vigorously  carrying  on  the  per- 
secution of  the  Christians  in  Egypt,  Syria,  and  else- 
where. Constantine  was  drawing  nearer  to  Licinius, 
to  whom  he  gave  in  marriage  his  sister  Constantia, 
was  preparing  a  powerful  army,  and  was  receiving 
secret  intelligence  from  Italy.  Early  in  312,  when  he 
felt  that  he  was  ready,  he  crossed  the  Alps  near  the 
Mont  Cenis  with  about  50,000  men  of  whom  half  were 
chosen  anji  tried  legionaries,  easily  overcame  the  re- 
sistance which  was  at  first  offered  to  him,  and  made 
himself  master  of  the  valley  of  the  Po,  whence  he 
marched  on  Rome.  Maxentius  had  not  moved  from 
the  capital,  trusting  to  the  strong  position  of  the  city, 
to  the  numerous  forces  at  his  disposal,  and  to  the 
many  difficulties  which  had  caused  the  failure  of  the 
expeditions  of  Galerius  and  Severus.  But  when  he 
learned  that  Constantine  was  approaching  the  city  at 
the  head  of  a  powerful  army  elated  by  a  victorious 
march  and  favoured  by  a  population  which  had  grown 
weary  of  his  government,  he  did  not  remain  shut  up 
within  the  impregnable  walls  of  Aurelian,  but  issued 
forth  to  confront  his  enem}'^  in  the  open  field.  The 
battle,  which  took  place  near  the  Pons  Milvius,  ended 


/408    j  Constantine  the  Great 

complete  defeat  of  Maxentius  who  along  with  a 
great  part  of  his  army  was  drowned  in  the  river 
(October  28,  312).  On  the  following  day  the  victor 
made  his  triumphal  entry  into  Rome.  He  immediately 
turned  with  deferential  words  to  the  senate  and  practi- 
cally promised  them  the  restoration  of  their  ancient 
privileges.  He  finally  disbanded  the  praetorian  guards 
and  dismantled  their  camp.  In  recompense  for  this, 
the  senate  decreed  him  a  triumphal  arch  which  still 
stands  where  the  ancient  Via  Sacra  meets  the  road 
from  the  Porta  Capena  and  which  was  adorned  by  the 
spoils  of  the  Arch  of  Trajan. 

The  conquest  of  Italy  dislocated  the  former  relations 
between  the  three  emperors,  but  it  made  Maximin's 
position  even  more  difficult.  Shortly  afterwards,  in 
the  early  days  of  313,  Licinius  and  Constantine  had  a 
meeting  at  Milan. 

132.  The  Edict  of  Milan  (early  in  313  A.D.)  and 
the  Downfall  of  Maximin  (313  A.D.)-  We  do  not  know 
what  was  the  course  of  the  deliberations  at  the  new 
conference.  But  we  may  easily  suppose  that,  while 
Licinius  consented  to  Constantine 's  new  aggrandize- 
ment, he  was  given  a  free  hand  by  the  latter  against 
Maximin,  and  that  it  was  probably  with  this  object, 
that  is  to  say,  the  destruction  of  the  foundation  of 
Maximin's  power,  that  they  determined  on  a  new 
edict  of  toleration  for  the  Christians,  an  act  which  was 
destined  to  be  one  of  capital  importance  in  the  history 
of  the  time,  and  which  in  the  history  of  the  world  is 
held  to  mark  the  definite  triumph  of  Christianity.* 

•  Euseb.,  H.  eccL,  x.,  5;  Lact.,  De  mort.  pers.,  48.  German  criti- 
cism as  usual  has  attempted  to  throw  doubt  on  the  very  existence 
of  an  actual  edict  of  Milan.  But  the  text  of  Lactantius  {De  mort. 
per  sec,  48)  is  too  explicit  and  formal  to  be  doubted  by  any  his- 


The  Edict  of  Milan  409 

There  was  in  fact  no  question  of  the  triumph  of  Christi- 
anity in  the  sense  of  a  solemn  recognition  of  that 
faith  as  above  all  others,  still  less  of  the  adoption  of 
Christianity  as  the  official  religion  of  the  State.  The 
Roman  State  still  had  an  official  religion  of  its  own 
and  the  emperor  in  that  religion  still  held  the  supreme 
office  of  pontijex  maximus.  The  edict  declared  that  it 
merely  confirmed  the  precedent  set  in  311;  that  is  to 
say,  it  confirmed  the  religious  toleration  (tt]v  eXsuOeptav 
T-^i;  GpTjaxetas)  granted  two  years  before,  removed 
any  remaining  restrictions,  and  gave  a  new  pledge  of 
the  purpose  of  the  Augusti  by  ordering  the  restora- 
tion to  the  Christian  churches  of  the  premises  and  the 
property  which  had  been  sequestrated  during  the 
great  persecution.  The  purpose  of  this  enactment  is 
clear.  It  aimed  at  a  declaration  of  policy  contrary 
to  that  pursued  by  Maximin  in  the  oriental  provinces. 
There,  especially  since  the  death  of  Galerius,  Maximin 
had  intensified  the  anti-Christian  persecution  and  had 
clearly  revealed  his  intention  of  leaning  for  support 
on  the  pagan  element  in  his  opposition  to  the  policy 
inaugurated  in  311  by  the  first  edict  of  the  three 
Augusti. 

In  other  words,  Christianity  and  paganism  became 
weapons  in  the  hands  of  the  three  emperors  for  use 
in  the  civil  war,  Constantine  and  Licinius  aiming 
at  raising  the  Christian  East  against  Maximin,  and 
Maximin  at  raising  the  pagans  of  the  West  against 
Constantine  and  Licinius.  But,  while  Constantine 
and  Licinius  were  then  only  thinking  of  carrying  out 

torian  whose  good  sense  has  not  been  undermined  by  a  passion 
for  criticism.  On  all  this  question  see  T.  de  Bacci  Venuti,  Dalle 
grande  perseczione  alia  vittoria  del  Cristianesimo ,  Milan,  19 13, 
Appendix,  pp.  303  flf. 


4IO  Constantine  the  Great 

a  skilful  political  move,  the  edict  of  313,  though  they 
did  not  know  it,  marked  an  important  moment  in 
universal  history — the  moment  at  which  the  principle 
of  the  liberty  of  conscience  was  first  affirmed.  Fifteen 
centuries  were  destined  to  elapse  before  the  principle 
which  animated  the  edict  triumphed  and  found  a 
universal  application  in  Europe  and  America.  Maxi- 
min,  however,  soon  grasped  the  intention  of  his 
enemies  and  did  not  hesitate  to  act.  Before  Licinius 
could  leave  Italy  he  invaded  the  Balkan  Peninsula, 
stormed  Byzantium,  and  then  Perinthus  at  the  first 
assault,  and  marched  on  Adrianople.  Licinius  had  to 
hasten  to  the  spot  and  at  first  assumed  a  defensive 
attitude;  but,  not  far  from  Perinthus,  about  eighteen 
miles  from  Heraclea.a  great  battle  took  place  in  April 
30,  313,  which  annulled  all  Maximin's  previous  suc- 
cesses. He  was  defeated  and  fled  to  Cilicia  where  he 
died. 

133.  The  New  War  between  Licinius  and  Con- 
stantine (314  A.  D.).  Shortly  before  this  battle 
Diocletian  had  died  at  Salona  after  having  witnessed 
the  downfall  of  his  system.  He  was  fortunate  at 
least  in  not  living  to  see  the  acts  of  repression  per- 
petrated by  Licinius  after  his  victory,  among  the 
victims  of  which  were  his  daughter  the  wife  of  Gale- 
rius,  and  her  son,  who  were  guilty  of  no  crime  except 
perhaps  that  of  living  in  the  East.  The  new  Asiatico- 
barbaric  empire  was  animated  by  two  passions,  fero- 
city and  suspicion.  The  fall  of  Maximin  soon  gave 
rise  to  a  new  civil  war  between  the  two  surviving 
Augusti,  for  victory  had  enlarged  the  powers  and  the 
dominions  of  Licinius  so  much  that  Constantine  took 
offence.  A  trifling  pretext,  Licinius's  refusal  to  deliver 
up  a  certain  Senecchio,  who  was   said  to  have   con- 


Peaceful   Years  ^^4 1 1 

spired  against  Constantine,  was  enough  to  cause  an 
outbreak  of  hostilities.  Licinius  was  defeated,  first 
at  Cibalas  on  the  Sava  in  Pannonia  on  October  8,  314, 
and  again  in  Thrace  in  the  plain  called  Mardiensis  or 
Jarbiensis,  but  neither  of  these  defeats  was  decisive. 
Constantine  understood  that  in  order  to  destroy  his 
rival  it  would  be  necessary  to  carry  the  war  into  the 
heart  of  the  East,  uncovering  the  frontiers  of  the  empire 
which  were  now  ever  in  greater  danger.  He  preferred, 
therefore,  to  come  to  terms  with  Licinius,  who  received 
Illyricum,  Greece,  part  of  Moesia,  Macedonia,  Epirus, 
Dacia,  Dardania,  Dalmatia,  Pannonia,  and  Noricum. 
But  the  most  important  clause  in  the  treaty  was  that 
Licinius,  who  had  no  son,  should  renounce  the  right 
of  naming  a  successor,  while  Constantine,  whose  son 
Crispus  was  nearly  of  age,  should  be  free  at  an  early 
date  to  name  him  his  legitimate  heir. 

134.  Peaceful  Years  (314-323  A.D.).  The  New 
Reform  of  the  Coinage  and  the  Donatist  Question. 

In  any  case  the  peace  concluded  in  314  or  315  gave 
the  empire  a  breathing  space  at  last.  For  about  nine 
years  arms  were  to  be  laid  aside  and  many  problems, 
new  and  old,  were  to  be  put  in  the  way  of  being  solved. 
One  of  these  problems  Constantine  had  taken  in  hand 
even  before  314.  In  312  he  had  commenced  a  new 
reform  of  the  coinage  by  issuing  aiirei  of  a  reduced  but 
fixed  weight,  not  e^)  of  the  libra  as  in  the  days  of  Dio- 
cletian, but  7-2.  The  new  gold  coin  was  called  by  a 
new  name — the  solidus,  and  was  apparently  worth 
about  three  dollars  or  a  little  more.  The  reform, 
which  could  not  be  completely  carried  out  until  many 
years  had  elapsed,  was  destined  to  be  more  successful 
than  that  of  Diocletian,  and  to  last  until  the  end  of  the 
Byzantine  empire.     As  for  the  silver  coinage  Con- 


4.12  Constantine  the  Great 

stantine  maintained  Diocletian's  argenteus  at  the  value 
of  9^6  of  the  libra,  but  he  added  two  new  coins  which 
facilitated  exchange  with  the  new  gold  money,  the 
miliarensis  equivalent  to  rii)o  of  the  gold  libra,  and 
therefore  7-3  of  the  silver  libra,  and  the  siliqiia  (or 
xepccTtov)  equivalent  to  half  the  miliarensis. 

To  the  same  year  belongs  an  important  innovation 
in  financial  administration.  Completing  Diocletian's 
work  Constantine  laid  down  that  the  census  and 
the  cadastral  survey  of  the  empire  should  be  revised 
every  fifteen  years.  The  financial  year  was  to  com- 
mence on  September  ist,  and  end  on  August  31st,  at 
the  close  of  the  quindecennial  period.  The  first  year 
of  the  new  era  was  312.  This  periodical  operation 
was  called  indictio  and  under  the  Byzantine  empire 
was  afterwarHs  used  in  reckoning  the  years. 

More  serious,  however,  than  the  monetary  and 
financial  question  was  the  religious  problem.  As  we 
have  seen,  the  edict  of  Milan  had  established  toler- 
ation for  all  varieties  of  religion.  The  old  idea,  which 
runs  through  all  classic  paganism,  that  there  is  no 
separation  between  civil  and  religious  society,  that 
indeed  all  the  functions  of  the  latter  are  subordinate  to 
those  of  the  former,  had  not  been  abolished,  and  could 
not  be  abolished  at  one  stroke.  Strong  as  Christianity 
was,  the  State  was  still  stronger  and  could  not  easih' 
renounce  a  principle  so  useful  and  indeed  so  necessary 
in  view  of  the  endless  variety  of  cults  professed 
throughout  the  empire.  But  Christianity  was  an 
exclusive  religion  which  claimed  to  be  the  only  true 
one  and  therefore  to  be  destined  to  supplant  all  the 
rest.  Moreover  it  affirmed  the  supremacy  of  the 
religious  over  the  civil  element  and  held  tlie  view  that 
civil  society  should  be  organized  at  the  dictates  of 


Peaceful  Years  (K^'^  J) 


religious  principle.  It  was  therefore  inevitable  that 
this  contradiction  should  give  rise  to  difficulties  of 
all  kinds,  the  earliest  of  which  were  produced  by 
the  heresies,  involved  as  these  were  with  various 
local  quarrels,  political,  economic,  and  municipal.  The 
State  could  not  disregard  these  conflicts  because  they 
disturbed  the  whole  current  of  social  life  and  often 
directly  affected  the  public  peace.  But  what  author- 
ity had  the  State  to  decide  religious  questions  in  a 
church  which  in  such  questions  recognized  only  the 
authority  of  its  spiritual  heads  ? 

It  was  i,n  Africa  that  Constantine  for  the  first  time 
made  the  disagreeable  acquaintance  of  these  difficul- 
ties. In  that  province  there  had  arisen  about  this 
time  an  extreme  sect  which  excluded  from  the  ecclesi- 
astical communion  all  who  luring  Diocletian's  great 
persecution  had  had  any  moment  of  weakness — the  so- 
cz\\Q,dLtr  adit  ores  la^si.  Anl  since,  for  example,  the 
Bishop  of  Carthage  had  been  ordained  by  one  of  these 
traditores,  this  sect  set  up  against  him  first  a  certain 
Majorinus,  and  then,  in  313,  a  man  named  Donatus. 
The  name  of  the  latter  was  given  to  a  heresy  known  as 
Donatigia.  In  a  country  so  full  of  fanaticism  and 
vivid  social  contrasts  as  the  Africa  and  the  Numidia 
of  those  days  a  schism  of  this  kind  could  not  but  give 
rise  to  violence  followed  by  reprisals.  Constantine, 
therefore,  had  to  take  steps  to  deal  with  the  situation. 
The  two  parties,  moreover,  the  Cajciliani  on  the  one 
hand  and  the  Donatists  on  the  other,  appealed  to  him 
to  decide  between  them.  But  how  could  he,  a  pagan, 
settle  a  question  of  this  kind?  Constantine  caused 
the  contest  to  be  referred  to  a  jury  of  Italian  and 
Gallic  bishops,  sitting  at  Rome,  who  gave  their  decision 
against  the  Donatists.     The  latter,  however,  would 


,  M.x^  ^  Constantine  the  Great 

not  give  in  and  refused  to  recognize  the  sentence. 
On  this  the  emperor,  the  pagan  pontifex  maximus, 
convoked  for  the  first  time  a  Christian  council  which 
met  at  Aries  on  August  i,  314.  The  majority  of  the 
Council  again  decided  against  the  Donatists  but 
failed  to  subdue  Donatism.  Then,  in  conformity 
with  the  findings  of  the  council,  an  imperial  order  was 
issued  excluding  the  Donatists  from  the  African 
Church.  As  the  empire  had  by  the  edict  of  Milan 
affirmed  religious  toleration,  it  was  necessarily  drawn 
on  by  the  necessity  of  maintaining  public  peace  and 
order  to  intervene  in  the  internal  concerns  of  the 
Christian  body  as  it  did  in  the  case  of  all  other  religions. 
The  Donatists,  however,  who  were  in  a  majority, 
resisted,  and,  in  spite  of  persecutions,  riots,  and 
conflicts,  the  Donatist  heresy  remained  predominant 
in  Africa.  The  empire  in  the  case  of  a  religion  like 
Christianity  had  no  authority  but  force  in  questions 
of  faith,  and  for  the  settlement  of  such  questions  force 
is  not  sufficient. 

135.  The  End  of  Licinius  (319-324  A.D.).  Until 
319  the  good  relations  between  Constantine  and 
Licinius  remained  undisturbed.  After  this  year, 
however,  they  began  to  deteriora'  e.  The  reasons  for 
this  are  not  very  clear,  and  were  probably  nimierous. 
Licinius  bore  malice  for  the  peace  of  314.  There  was 
the  mutual  mistrust  inherent  in  the  system  of  multi- 
plied emperors.  Constantine's  ambition  made  him 
desirous  of  substituting  the  hereditary  principle  for 
Diocletian's  system  of  appointing  emperors  by  the 
nomination  of  the  Augusti  which  recalled  the  system 
of  adoption  under  the  Antonines.  War  was  therefore 
inevitable,  and  both  emperors  began  to  make  their 
preparations.     Constantine    collected    material    and 


The  End  of  Licinius  415 

tried  to  conciliate  the  Persians  who  were  the  natural 
enemies  of  the  Eastern  Augustus.  He  promulgated 
new  laws  on  the  subject  of  debtors  to  the  fiscus.  He 
did  his  best  to  outdo  the  most  generous  governments 
of  the  empire  and  made  great  efforts  to  secure  for  him- 
self the  favour  and  support  of  the  Christian  element. 
Licinius  on  his  side  was  preparing  very  powerful  mili- 
tary forces.  Without  going  so  far  as  an  actual  pro- 
secution he  adopted  a  policy  hostile  to  the  Christians, 
which  in  many  places  did  m  fact  degenerate  into  a 
persecution.  He  excluded  Christians  from  the  army 
and  from  the  administration,'  and  even  appears  to 
have  sought  support  from  the  Donatist  faction  against 
whom  Constantine  was  fighting  in  Africa. 

War  broke  out  in  323  in  a  rather  curious  way.  In 
that  year  there  had  been  an  incursion  of  the  Goths 
which  had  penetrated  into  Thrace  and  Moesia  which 
were  the  European  provinces  assigned  to  Licinius. 
Constantine  hastened  to  repel  the  invasion  and 
Licinius  chose  to  regard  what  might  have  been 
accepted  as  an  act  of  friendly  assistance  as  a  violation 
of  his  territories.  The  swords  which  for  so  long  had 
been  sharpened  were  now  openly  brandished,  and  on 
July  3.  323,  the  two  armies  met  in  the  plains  of 
Adrianople.  Licinius  was  defeated  and,  after  a  valiant 
struggle,  shut  himself  up  in  Byzantium,  the  fortress 
which  barred  the  way  to  Asia  by  land  as  his  powerful 
fleet  closed  all  access  by  sea.  Constantine 's  armada, 
however,  was  commanded  by  his  son  Crispus,  who, 
though  still  a  very  young  man,  had  distinguished 
himself  in  earlier  operations  against  the  Franks  and 
had  received  the  title  of  Caesar.  Crispus  defeated 
the  fleet  of  Licinius  at  the  mouth  of  the  Hellespont, 

•  C/.  Vita  Const.,  i.,  51-55. 


( 


Cojistantifie  the  Great 

whereupon  Licinius  abandoned  Byzantium  and  tried 
to  bar  the  way  to  Asia  Minor  against  Constantine. 
He  was  surrounded,  however,  and  compelled  to  give 
battle  near  Chrysopolis  (the  modern  Scutari),  where 
he  was  again  beaten  (September  i8,  324).  He  then 
surrendered  to  his  conqueror  who,  in  spite  of  a  promise 
to  spare  his  life,  had  him  murdered  in  the  following 
year. 

136.  Religious  Complications.  The  Council  of 
Nice  (325  A.D.).  Christian  apologists  celebrate  this 
victory  as  terminating  the  final  duel  between  Christi- 
anity and  paganism,  and  their  view  is  nearer  the  truth 
than  modern  critics  imagine.  Constantine's  victory 
was  the  victory  of  the  Christians  who  throughout  the 
empire  had  taken  his  part  against  Licinius.  Constan- 
tine hastened  to  issue  an  edict  in  which  he,  the  high 
priest  of  paganism,  not  only  annulled  the  decrees  of 
Licinius  but  described  the  religion  of  which  he  was  the 
head  as  "a  deplorable  error, "  and  even  as  an  "impious 
opinion,"  a  "power  of  darkness,"  and  those  who 
followed  it  as  "wanderers  from  the  truth, "  although  by 
his  sovereign  grace  he  allowed  them  to  keep  their 
"temples  of  lies."' 

The  emperor  who  had  succeeded  in  reconstituting  in 
his  person  the  unity  of  the  empire  had  now  given  way 
to  the  exclusive  spirit  of  Christianity,  whose  aim  was 
to  supplant  all  other  religions  including  those  which 
might  be  regarded  as  the  moral  basis  of  the  imperial 
power,  the  worship  of  the  emperors  and  Mithraism. 
In  order  to  conquer  the  whole  empire  for  himself  and 
to  found  a  dynasty  Constantine,  with  the  support 
of  the  Christians,  had  weakened  the  foundations  of 
absolute  power  which  Aurelian  and  Diocletian  had 

'  Ens.,  Vita  Const.,  ii.,  29,  56,  60. 


Religious  Complications  417 

sought  to  consolidate  by  the  aid  of  oriental  religions. 
This,  in  a  word,  was  the  sum  of  the  political  and 
religious  work  of  Constantine.  He  does  not  seem  to  '■ 
have  clearly  realized  the  scope  and  the  consequences 
of  his  own  policy.  This  is  shown  by  the  attitude 
which  he  assumed  towards  the  Arian  heresy  which  he 
found  at  its  height  in  the  East.  A  certain  Alexan- 
drian priest  named  Arius  had  for  some  time  been  main- 
taining that  Christ  had  been  created  by  God  but  not 
out  of  the  divine  substance,  and  therefore  out  of 
nothing,  a  doctrine  which  made  the  supposedly  perfect 
identity  between  the  three  Persons  of  the  Trinity 
impossible.  The  two  chief  dangers  of  this  heresy  were 
first  that  it  threatened  the  Divinity  of  Christ,  and 
hence  the  whole  foundations  of  the  new  religion,  and 
secondly  that  on  the  Arian  hypothesis  Christianity 
approximated  to  the  schools  of  paganism,  numerous 
in  the  third  century,  which  admitted  the  existence  of  a 
single  God  as  a  superior  spirit,  the  other  deities  being 
incarnations  of  His  particular  attribiites.  In  the 
East,  where  philosophic  culture  was  not  yet  wholly 
exhausted  and  the  love  of  disputation  was  very  much 
alive,  such  a  doctrine  was  bound  to  make  a  com- 
motion. Alexander,  Bishop  of  Alexandria,  supported 
by  the  vote  of  a  Synod  of  a  hundred  bishops,  had 
expelled  Arius  from  the  Christian  community  in  321. 
Arius,  however,  was  not  alone.  The  simplicity  of 
his  doctrine  made  it  accessible  to  the  average  intelli- 
gence and  therefore  popular.  The  sympathy  which  it 
encountered  in  the  ranks  of  the  Neoplatonists  whose 
system  was  so  widely  diffused  in  oriental  countries, 
the  rancorous  feuds  and  the  passion  for  reprisals  to 
which  the  earlier  discussions  and  repression  had  given 
rise,  soon  gave  him  a  large  following.     Altercations 

VOL.    II  —  27 


41 8  Constantine  the  Great 

were  as  usual  followed  by  violence  and  street  fighting, 
and  Constantine  made  up  his  mind  to  intervene.  The 
letter  which  he  wrote  on  the  subject  to  the  contending 
parties  deserves  to  be  read :  "  I  had  hoped, "  he  wrote, 
"to  unify  the  ideas  which  all  my  peoples  have  about 
divine  things  because  I  well  knew  that  if  I  could 
secure  agreement  on  this  point  as  I  ardently  desired, 
the  management  of  public  affairs  would  be  much 
simplified  .  .  .  But,  alas,  what  is  this  news  which 
has  grievously  wounded  my  ears,  nay  my  very  heart ! 
I  learn  that  there  are  among  you  more  dissensions 
than  there  ever  were  in  Africa.  .  .  .  And  yet  it  seems 
to  me  that  the  cause  is  very  trifling  and  indeed  un- 
worthy to  be  the  cause  of  such  a  conflict.  .  .  .  You, 
Alexander,  desired  to  know  what  your  priests  thought 
about  a  point  of  law — indeed  on  what  was  merely  part 
of  a  question  of  no  importance,  and  you,  Arius,  if  that 
was  your  opinion,  should  have  kept  silence.  .  .  . 
There  was  no  need  either  to  put  or  to  answer  the 
question,  for  these  matters  are  problems  which  there 
is  no  necessity  to  discuss  but  which  are  suggested  b}' 
idleness  and  are  good  for  nothing  but  to  confuse  the 
mind.  ...  Is  it  right  that  for  the  sake  of  vain  words 
you  should  begin  a  fratricidal  conflict?  .  .  .  These 
are  vulgar  matters  fit  for  ignorant  boys  not  for  priests 
or  wise  men.  .  .  .  Restore  to  me,  therefore,  I  be- 
seech you,  quiet  days  and  nights  free  from  anxiety, 
so  that  I  too  in  future  may  taste  the  pure  joy  of 
life.  .  .  ."^ 

It  is  quite  clear  from  this  letter  that  Constantine 
conceived  Christianity  in  accordance  with  the  pagan 
idea  of  religion  as  a  political  instrument  for  maintain- 
ing order  in  the  State.     The  fury  of  these  theological 

'  Eus.,  Vita  Const.,  i.,  64-72;  Socr.,  Hist.  EccL,  i,  7. 


Religious  Complications  f%^^) 

discussions  was  in  his  eyes  nothing  more  than  a  form 
of  insanity  which  it  was  the  duty  of  the  State  to  sup- 
press. Accordingly  he  caused  a  great  council  to  be  con- 
vened in  order  to  compose  the  quarrel.  At  Nice  in  ' 
the  spring  of  325  more  than  250  bishops,  most  of  them 
from  the  oriental  provinces,  met  together.  Constan- 
tine  opened  the  proceedings  in  a  speech  which  was  both 
modest  and  prosaic.  By  re-establishing  concord  in 
the  church,  he  said,  they  would  perform  an  act  pleas- 
ing in  the  sight  of  God  and  "would  render  a  great 
service"  to  the  emperor.'  The  president  of  the 
council  was  the  bishop  Osius,  one  of  Constantine's 
secretaries,  who  was  opposed  to  Arianism,  and  the 
imperial  influence  was  cast  on  that  side  of  the  dis- 
cussion. Arius,  accordingly,  was  once  more  con- 
demned. The  council  decreed  that  Christ  was  not 
sprung  from  nothing,  that  He  was  in  no  way  different 
from  the  Father  but  was  generated  from  the  Essence 
of  the  Father,  Very  God  of  Very  God,  and  was  consub- 
stantial  with  the  Father  (6{xo6uato<;).  Thus  was  drawn 
up  the  creed  which  is  daily  repeated  by  the  Catholic 
Church  at  the  principal  of  her  services,  the  Mass. 
The  question  which  was  so  subtle,  and,  in  Constantine's 
opinion,  so  otiose,  might  it  seemed  be  taken  as  settled. 
Christianity,  however,  was  not  a  political  religion  like 
all  the  Eastern  and  Western  religions  with  which 
statesmen  had  hitherto  had  to  deal.  It  was  the  germ 
of  a  new  and  an  immense  world.  It  was  a  religion 
whose  object  was  not  to  buttress  the  declining  empire 
of  Rome  but  to  redeem  mankind  by  preaching  a  loftier 
morality.  So  the  Council  of  Nice  which  Constantine  . 
had  convened  in  order  to  re-establish  peace  and  har- 
mony was  destined  to  be  the  commencement  of  a 
'  Eus.,  Vita  Const.,  ii'.,  11-12. 


420  Constantine  the  Great 

formidable  struggle  which  was  to  weaken  the  weary 
empire  still  further.  It  was  now  fated  that  every- 
thing which  human  wisdom  thought  it  necessary  to 
do  to  save  the  empire  should  help  to  precipitate  its 
ruin. 

137.  The  New  Organization  of  the  Empire.  The 
very  reconstitution  of  the  unity  of  the  empire  which 
was  accomplished  by  Constantine  shows  how  much 
the  State  had  been  weakened  since  the  time  of  Dio- 
cletian. Sole  master  of  the  empire  after  so  many  civil 
wars,  Constantine  was  less  secure  of  his  power  than 
Diocletian  had  been  when  he  shared  the  supreme 
authority  with  another  Augustus  and  two  Caesars. 
He  became  so  suspicious  that  in  326,  for  reasons  of 
which  we  are  ignorant  and  on  which  we  can  only 
form  vague  conjectures,  he  caused  his  son  Crispus,  the 
conqueror  of  the  Franks  and  of  Licinius  to  be  killed, 
together  with  his  grandson  who  was  called  Licinianus 
and  was  still  of  tender  years.  Shortly  afterwards 
Fausta,  his  second  wife,  the  daughter  of  Maximian 
and  the  mother  of  his  three  younger  sons,  shared  their 
fate.  The  court  was  still  more  orientalized.  The 
pomp  of  the  ceremonial,  the  complication  of  etiquette, 
the  luxury  of  the  courtiers,  the  mystery  with  which 
the  emperor  was  veiled,  all  markedly  increased. 
There  were  a  series  of  great  dignitaries  under  each  of 
whom  was  a  numerous  and  minutely  graded  and  titled 
hierarchy.  These  were  the  prcetorian  prcsfeds  whom 
Constantine,  following  out  the  reform  of  Diocletian, 
deprived  of  all  military  power ;  the  magistri  militum  or 
commanders  in  chief  of  the  infantry  and  the  cavalry; 
the  qucEstor  sacri  Palatii  who  received  information  and 
prepared  and  countersigned  the  laws  to  be  discussed 
by  the  consistorium  and  promulgated  by  the  emperor; 


The  New  Organization  of  the  Empire  421 

the  magister  officiorum,  a  kind  of  minister  of  the 
Imperial  House,  who  directed  the  police,  the  palace 
guards,  and  the  employes  of  the  central  administration ; 
and  finally  the  two  ministers  of  finance — comes  sacra- 
rum  largitionum  and  comes  rerum  privatarum.  The 
new  imperial  council,  the  consistorium,  also  became 
more  regularized  than  had  been  the  case  under  Dio- 
cletian. Its  ordinary  members  were  the  holders  of  the 
great  offices  above  enumerated  with  the  exception,  it 
seems,  of  the  praetorian  prsefects  and  the  magistri 
militum  who  attended  only  on  exceptional  occasions. 
The  great  officers  were  supplemented  by  the  comites 
consistoriani  who  were  permanent  members  of  the 
council  selected  by  the  emperor,  and  who  we  know 
were  at  a  later  date  twenty  in  number. 

Under  the  ministers  of  the  imperial  house  and  the  ^ 
consistorium  who  together  formed  the  central  organ  of 
political  and  legislative  control,  was  the  ever  increasing 
bureaucracy  of  the  empire.  The  three  officials  of  the  ) 
imperial  chancellery  who  under  the  earlier  empire 
were  known  as  ah  epistulis,  a  libellis,  and  a  memoria, 
now  changed  their  names.  Each  was  called  a  scrinium, 
and  a  fourth  was  added,  the  scrinium  dispositionum, 
whose  duty  it  was  to  attend  to  all  the  emperor's 
business  in  connection  with  journeys,  inspections,  etc. 
The  change  of  name  corresponded  to  a  change  of 
system.  Instead  of  a  single  official  we  have  now  a  \ 
whole  department  with  a  great  hierarchy  of  officials. 
Nor  were  the  scrinia  limited  to  those  above  mentioned. 
All  the  functionaries  of  the  empire  had  scrinia  of  their 
own,  and  each  scrinium  had  its  own  hierarchy  which 
was  to  serve  as  a  model  for  the  absolute  monarchies 
in  the  earlier  epochs  of  modern  history. 

The  provincial  arrangements  were  still  ostensibly 


/l.22/ 


<j^2?/  Constantine  the  Great 

those  of  Diocletian.  The  tetrarchy  had  disappeared; 
there  was  only  one  emperor.  But  the  administrative 
divisions  created  by  Diocletian  remained  in  their  en- 
tirety. The  empire  was  regarded  as  divided  into  three, 
or  possibly  four,  sections,  at  the  head  of  which  stood 
the  prffltorian  praefects,  who,  now  that  the  praetorian 
guards  were  disbanded,  were  merely  great  officers  of 
State  having  judicial  and  civil  functions.  On  these 
depended  the  vicar ii  and  on  the  latter  the  presides, 
the  consulares,  or  the  correctores  as  the  case  might  be. 

What,  meanwhile,  had  happened  to  the  old  officers 
of  State  and  to  the  senate?  Ancient  Rome  had  still 
her  senate,  her  consuls,  her  praetors,  her  aediles,  and 
her  tribunes,  but  they  were  now  merely  municipal 
officers,  stripped  of  all  their  greatness. 

"Army  organization  retained  the  character  impressed 
on  it  by  Diocletian.  The  supreme  directors  of  mili- 
tary affairs  were,  as  we  have  seen,  the  niagistri  militum, 
under  whose  orders  were  the  duces  commanding  one 
or  more  provinces  or  the  frontier  garrisons.  This 
was  an  inheritance  from  Diocletian,  but  into  the 
composition  of  the  army  itself  Constantine  intro- 
duced an  innovation  which  exaggerated  the  pre- 
cautions of  his  predecessor  into  positive  errors  to  be 
expiated  by  bitter  experience  in  after  days.  The 
effectives  of  each  legion  were  still  further  reduced. 
Civil  and  military  authorities  were  sharply  separated 
from  each  other,  as  were  the  infantry  and  cavalry 
commands,  the  commissariat,  the  transport,  and  the 
paymaster's  departments.  All  this  had  its  advan- 
tages, but  the  forces  could  no  longer  be  rapidly  con- 
centrated nor  without  the  imperial  will  was  it  easy 
to  bring  about  agreement  between  the  different  parts 
of  the  army. 


The  New  Organization  of  the  Empire  423 

These  drawbacks  were  aggravated  by  the  new  re- 
grouping of  the  forces.  The  army  was  divided  into' 
three  great  categories :  (i)  The  palatine  force  {domestici, 
protectores,  scolares)  one  fifth  of  the  whole  army,  who 
were  analogous  to  the  old  praetorian  guard  but  now 
formed  a  kind  of  reserve  army  and  followed  the 
emperor  on  important  expeditions.  (2)  Troops  of  the 
line,  or  comitatenses,  recruited  from  citizens  and  bar- 
barians, commanded  by  the  military  magistrates  of 
the  provinces  {comites  or  duces)  and  scattered  in  small 
garrisons  about  the  cities  in  the  interior.  (3)  Lastly  the 
frontier  troops  {riparienses  or  castriciani  or  limitanei) 
recruited  in  general  among  the  barbarian  peoples  and 
the  lowest  class  within  the  empire  and  held  to  a  longer 
term  of  service  at  lower  rates  of  pay.  These  troops 
had  to  remain  permanently  quartered  in  certain 
defined  frontier  zones,  were  installed  in  castles,  fort- 
resses and  entrenched  camps,  and  were  in  great  part 
local  coloni.  This  meant  that  the  best  part  of  the 
army  (the  comitatenses)  was  broken  up  into  small  units 
which  lived  in  the  towns  of  the  interior  where  they 
oppressed  the  inhabitants  and  were  themselves  cor- 
rupted by  the  ease  and  efTeminacy  of  city  life.  Finally 
it  is  to  be  noted  that  all  three  classes  of  troops  were 
flooded   with   barbarian   contingents. 

These  reforms  are  an  evident  proof  of  the  growing 
weakness  of  the  empire.  It  is  inexplicable  how  a 
soldier  and  a  statesman  like  Constantine  came  to  split 
up  his  army  by  distributing  so  great  a  part  of  it  among 
cities  far  from  the  frontiers,  unless  we  suppose  that 
the  army  had  now  to  be  used  as  much  to  maintain 
order  in  the  interior  of  the  empire,  which  was  now 
threatened  by  so  many  possibilities  of  dissolution 
and  discord,  as  to  defend  the  empire  against  the  bar- 


424  Constantine  the  Great 

barians.     Again  we  cannot  explain  why  he  opened  the 
.'ranks  of  the  legions  so  easily  to  the  barbarians  unless 
A  we  admit  that  he  felt  himself  impotent  to  deal  with 
\  the  growing  repugnance  of  the  new  Christian  society 
/'■for  military  life  and  all  the  other  causes  which  were 
/  alienating  his  subjects  from  military  service.     The 
/  multiplication  of  military  and  civil  offices  which  took 
r  place  at  this  time  can  only  be  explained  by  the  sup- 
position that  he  wished  for  the  support  of  a  numerous 
bureaucracy  bound  to  him  and  to  his  family  by  ties  of 
interest  and  this  was  yet  another  sign  of  weakness.     An 
even  clearer  proof  of  the  growing  debility  of  the  empire 
was  the  foundation  of  the  new  capital.     The  reasons 
for  this  great   change  were  undoubtedly  many,  and 
were  above  all  military.     The  capital  of  an  empire 
which  in  the  East  had  to  struggle  with  the  Persians 
and  in  the  West  had  to  defend  the  Rhine  and  the 
Danube  against  the  barbarians,  an  empire  ruled  by  a 
single  emperor  who  wished  by  himself  to  supervise  the 
oriental  and  the  occidental  provinces  and  promptly 
repress  any  military  revolt  in  either,  was  better  situ- 
ated on  the  Bosphorus  than  in  southern  Italy.     There 
were  also  political  reasons.     The  capital  of  the  new 
absolute  and  Asiatic  monarchy  which  was  so  well  dis- 
posed towards  Christianity  could  not  be  Rome,  the 
most  eminently  pagan  and  republican  city  in  the  em- 
pire.    Constantine  therefore  chose  the  ancient  Byzan- 
tium, and,  as  the  sequel  proved,  he  chose  well;  but  the 
transfer  of  the  capital  of  the  empire  to  the  Bosphorus 
was  nothing  if  not  a  declaration  that  the  task  of  Rome 
in  the  West  was  fulfilled  and  that  her  great  historic 
mission  was  at  an  end. 

138.     The  Last  Years  of  Constantine  (330-337A.D.). 
On  May  11,  330,  Constantine  solemnly  inaugurated 


The  Last   Years  of  Constantine     .  425 


the  new  capital  of  the  empire, — Nea  Pwixy)  or  Constan- 
tinople. Two  years  later  (332)  we  find  him  engaged 
in  a  successful  campaign  against  the  Goths  and  later 
(334)  with  the  Sarmatians,  who  after  his  victory 
became  colonists  and  soldiers  of  the  empire. 

In  335  the  aged  monarch  performed  another  act 
which  once  more  demonstrated,  and  more  clearly  than 
ever,  the  weakness  of  the  political  edifice  which  he 
had  constructed.  He  partitioned  the  empire  among 
his  three  sons.  All  three  had  been  appointed  Caesars 
along  with  Dalmatius,  his  nephew.  To  his  eldest 
son  Constantine  were  assigned  Spain, Gaul,  and  Britain; 
to  Constantius,  Asia,  Syria,  and  Egypt;  to  Constans, 
Italy,  Illyricimi,  and  Africa.  All  three  were  given 
the  title  of  Augustus.  Dalmatius  received  Thrace, 
Macedonia,  and  Achaea  with  the  title  of  Cassar,  and 
Hanniballianus,  a  brother  of  Dalmatius,  was  raised 
to  the  vacant  throne  of  Armenia  and  the  neighbouring 
regions  with  the  style  of  King  of  Kings.  What,  it  may 
be  asked,  was  the  use  of  having  struggled  so  hard  to 
overturn  the  tetrarchy  of  Diocletian  only  to  re-estab- 
lish it  in  a  weaker  and  more  precarious  form  by  intro- 
ducing into  it  the  debilitated  principle  of  hereditary 
succession  which  even  yet  had  no  firm  roots  in  the 
empire?  Not  even  Constantine  had  the  strength  to 
solve  the  tremendous  problem  of  the  legal  principle 
of  the  supreme  authority,  and,  towards  the  end  of  his 
long  and  laborious  life,  he  split  up  the  empire  under 
the  illusion  that  it  would  thereby  be  more  easy  to  keep 
it  in  his  own  family,  sacrificing  the  unity  of  the  empire 
to  this  very  hereditary  principle  which  was  sterile 
because  the  peoples  of  the  empire  did  not  acknowledge 
its  legitimacy. 

Finally    (and   this   was   an   event   of  momentous 


426  Constanttne  the  Great 

importance)  Constantine,  who  had  sought  to  re-estab- 
lish the  moral  unity  of  the  empire  by  means  of  Christi- 
anity, allowed  himself  in  his  last  years  to  be  dragged 
into  the  whirlpool  of  Christian  quarrels  by  becoming 
a  champion  of  the  Arian  heresy  which  he  had  caused 
to  be  condemned  at  the  Council  of  Nice.  After  his 
condemnation  at  that  Council.  Arius  had  gone  into 
exile,  but  Arianism  was  widespread  and  strong,  and 
had  powerful  friends  even  at  court  among  whom  was 
Constantia,  the  sister  of  the  emperor.  Arius  therefore 
did  not  lose  heart.  He  profited  by  the  errors  of  his 
adversaries.  He  mitigated  and  tempered  his  doctrines 
and  in  this  way  he  and  his  followers  succeeded 
in  regaining  Constantine's  favour  by  persuading 
him  that  a  reconciliation  was  possible.  The  efforts 
made  by  the  emperor  to  effectuate  this  reconciliation 
and  the  opposition  with  which  he  met,  more  especially 
from  Athanasius  the  new  Bishop  of  Alexandria,  drove 
him  more  and  more  into  the  arms  of  the  Arian  party. 
The  sect  derived  new  courage  from  the  imperial  favour 
and  in  335  succeeded  in  securing  the  condemnation 
of  Athanasius  at  the  Council  of  Tyre.  Athanasius 
was  banished  to  Gaul  and  all  the  more  important  of 
his  partisans  were  persecuted  and  dispersed.  Arius 
returned  to  Constantinople.  The  court  was  invaded 
by  the  Arians  who  in  all  parts  of  the  East  became 
predominant  in  the  Church.  But  the  opposite  party 
did  not  lay  down  their  arms,  though  persecuted,  and 
from  this  moment  the  empire  was  agitated  by  a  new 
and  implacable  ferment  of  dissolution  added  to  the 
rest.  Christianity  was  to  regenerate  the  world,  but  it 
could  not  buttress  the  empire. 

The  last  enterprise  undertaken  by  the  indefatigable 
emperor  was  a  great  campaign  against  Persia  where 


The  Last   Years  of  Constantine        427 

Sapor  II.,  the  nephew  of  Narseus,  was  now  king.  The 
ever  latent  conflict  between  the  two  empires  had  of 
late  years  been  exacerbated  by  a  question  which  was 
both  political  and  religious.  Christianity  had  pene- 
trated into  Armenia  where  in  302,  before  Constantine's 
conversion,  King  Tiridates,  had  been  baptized.  It  had 
also  reached  Iberia  and  Persia,  thus  giving  the  already 
half  Christianized  Roman  Empire  various  points  of 
support.  In  order  to  counteract  these  influences, 
Sapor  had  resumed  in  a  more  decided  manner  the 
propaganda  of  Mithraism,  and  Constantine  had  re- 
plied by  demanding  protection  for  his  Christian  sub- 
jects in  Persia  and  by  favouring  at  his  court  a  certain 
Armisda  who  was  Sapor's  brother  and  probable  rival. 
Sapor  in  his  turn  had  dethroned  the  King  of  Ar- 
menia and  Constantine  had  rejoined  by  assigning 
Armenia,  as  we  have  seen,  to  his  nephew  Hanniballia- 
nus.  Sapor  on  this  reclaimed  the  five  provinces 
beyond  the  Tigris  which  Diocletian  had  torn  from 
Persia.  The  Roman  emperor  was  preparing  to  cross 
the  Tigris  in  order  to  strike  direct  at  Ctesiphon  when 
he  died  suddenly  on  May  22,  337,  shortly  after  having 
received  baptism  from  an  Arian  named  Eusebius  of 
Nicomedia. 

Constantine  was  certainly  a  sovereign  of  superior 
abilities.  But  he  appeared  at  a  critical  moment  at 
which  an  immense  and  decisive  change  in  the  history 
of  the  world  was  being  accomplished,  and,  while  he 
was  no  longer  a  pagan  and  a  man  of  the  ancient  world, 
he  was  not  yet  a  true  and  perfect  Christian,  and  a  man 
of  the  new  world.  His  whole  policy  was  influenced 
by  this  fact.  It  was  wavering,  violent,  incoherent, 
confused  and,  in  part  at  least,  sterile.  Compared 
with  him  Diocletian  was  powerful,  coherent,  vigorous, 


428  Constantine  the  Great 

simple,  and  clear  in  his  complete  loyalty  to  the  tra- 
dition of  antiquity.  Diocletian  was  the  last  great 
man  of  the  ancient  world,  Constantine  a  restless  fig- 
ure typical  of  an  age  of  transition. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

THE    GREAT    RELIGIOUS    STRUGGLES 

(337-363    A.D.) 

139.  From  the  Death  of  Constantine  to  the  Fall 
of  Constantine  II.  (337-340  A.D.).  The  death  of 
Constantine  was  followed  by  several  months  of  calm, 
but  suddenly — it  would  seem  between  July  and  Sep- 
tember, 337 — a  military  revolt  broke  out  at  Con- 
stantinople in  the  imperial  palace  and  in  the  city. 
The  soldiers'  cry  was  that  they  would  have  no  rulers 
but  the  sons  of  Constantine,  that  is  to  say  Constantine 
II.  then  twenty-one  years  of  age,  Constantius  II. 
who  was  twenty,  and  Constans  who  was  seventeen. 
They  murdered  Dalmatius,  Hannaballianus  and  all 
the  male  descendants  of  Constantius  Chlorus,  their 
most  distant  relatives,  and  their  supporters.  None 
escaped  but  two  boys,  sons  of  a  brother  of  Constantine, 
named  Gallus  and  Julianus  of  whom  one  was  twelve 
and  the  other  barely  six  years  old. 

It  is  ver>^  difficult,  in  the  face  of  positive  accusa- 
tions by  contemporaries,  to  maintain  that  the  sons  of 
Constantine,  and  especially  Constantius,  had  no  re- 
sponsibility for  this  murder.  The  revolt  was  directed 
by  a  faction  on  their  side  and  in  their  interest.  But 
at  any  rate  it  is  certain  that  shortly  after  the  murder 

429 


430  The  Great  Religious  Struggles 

on  September  9th,  the  three  Constantiniani  received 
from  the  senate  the  title  of  Augusti,  and  that  in  the 
following  year,  at  Sirmium  in  Pannonia,  the  three 
brothers  met  for  the  purpose  of  redistributing  the 
empire.  In  addition  to  what  he  already  had  Con- 
stantius  now  received  Pontus,  Thrace  including  Con- 
stantinople, Macedonia,  and  Achaea.  To  Constantine 
II.  was  assigned  Mauretania.  Constans  alone  does 
not  seem  to  have  increased  his  share. 

Asiatic  absolutism  had  not  been  long  in  staining 
the  new  capital  with  the  blood  of  its  palace  tragedies. 
Shortly  after  the  murders  an  amnesty  was  declared  in 
favour  of  the  Athanasian  party  who  were  permitted 
to  return  from  exile,  and  the  religious  policy  of  Con- 
stantine's  last  years  was  thus  reversed.  But  the  reason 
for  this  act  will  be  plain  when  it  is  realized  that  it  was 
due  to  the  initiative  of  Constans  and  Constantine  II. 
The  East  was  predominantly  Arian,  but  the  Western 
provinces  were,  for  the  most  part,  Athanasian.  The 
latent  rivalry  which  for  centuries  had  dominated 
the  two  parts  of  the  empire,  was  now  renewed  in  the 
Christian  Church  and  especially  in  the  two  episco- 
pates of  Rome  and  Alexandria.  The  former  sought  to 
impose  its  supremacy,  and  with  it  the  Nicene  creed. 
The  latter  with  its  Arianism  stood  for  all  the  ardent 
ambitions  of  the  great  Eastern  churches — Caesarea 
the  most  ancient  and  the  most  active,  Antioch,  Tyre, 
and  now  Constantinople — to  be  free  and  predominant. 
It  is  eas}^  to  understand,  therefore,  now  that  the 
empire  had  no  longer  a  single  sovereign,  that  the  two 
Augusti  of  the  West  were  interested  in  stopping  the 
persecution  of  Athanasianism  while  it  suited  Constan- 
tius  to  continue  it.  But,  though  the  two  Western 
emperors  agreed  in  their  poHcy,  it  was  not  long  before 


Councils  of  Sardica  and  Philippopolis  431 

they  were  at  war,  the  subject  of  their  contention  being 
(as  is  supposed)  the  possession  of  Northern  Africa. 
Constantine  II.,  taking  advantage  of  the  absence  of 
Constans  in  Dacia,  threw  himself  on  Italy,  hoping  to 
drive  out  his  colleague  and  thus  to  repeat  the  man- 
oeuvre of  his  'father  against  Maxentius  in  312,  but  he 
was  defeated  and  slain  not  far  from  Aqtiileia  (340). 

140.  The  Origins  of  the  Catholic  Church  and  the 
Schismatic  Church  of  the  East.  The  Councils  of 
Sardica  and  Philippopolis  (344  A.D.).  Constantius 
did  not  oppose  the  usurpation  which  doubled  the 
power  of  Constans  because  he  and  the  provinces  al- 
ready assigned  to  him  had  inherited  from  his  father 
the  whole  burden  of  the  Persian  war  which  had  just 
begun  in  338.  Each  spring  Sapor  II.,  the  Persian 
King,  swooped  down  on  the  plain  between  the  Tigris 
and  the  Euphrates,  devastating  the  country,  burning 
the  crops,  besieging  the  fortresses,  sacking  the  open 
towns,  putting  the  inhabitants  to  the  sword,  disturb- 
ing trade  and  industry,  doing  and  suffering  a  series 
of  small  and  never  decisive  feats  of  arms.  Absorbed 
in  this  exhausting  conflict  Constantius  could  not  in- 
tervene with  much  energy  in  the  internal  affairs  of 
the  empire.  To  the  Persian  war  were  added  religious 
and  civil  disturbances.  Constans  no  longer  opposed 
the  exclusive  spirit  of  Christianity  and  initiated  the 
systematic  persecution  of  paganism;  in  341  he  pro- 
hibited pagan  sacrifices.'  But  while  he  was  involving 
himself  in  this  final  struggle  against  the  immemorial 
religion  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans,  the  heresies  of  the 
triumphant  religion  gave  him  no  peace.  Immediately 
on  his  return  to  Alexandria,  Athanasius  had  to  com- 
mence an  intense  agitation  against  Arianism,  sum- 
'  Cod.  Theod.,  xvi.,  lo,  2. 


432  The  Great  Religious  Struggles 

moiling  to  his  assistance  the  two  emperors  of  the  West 
and,  what  was  perhaps  historically  more  important, 
the  Western  bishops,  especially  the  Pope  of  Rome,  in 
condemning  the  religious  policy  of  the  last  years 
of  Constantine  and  of  his  successor.  Many  of  his 
followers  who  had  also  been  amnestied  followed  his 
example,  and  religious  agitations  flared  up  in  all  parts 
of  the  empire.  At  the  request  of  various  parties,  the 
Pope  Julius  had  convoked  a  council  at  Rome  in  340 
to  which  he  invited  the  Eastern  bishops.  Certain  of 
these,  however,  including  the  bishops  of  Caesarea  in 
Cappadocia,  of  Antioch  and  Constantinople,  replied 
in  a  letter  from  Antioch  in  which  they  laid  down  the 
principles  of  the  schism  which  has  continued  to  the 
present  day.  These  were  the  equality  of  the  rights  of 
all  churches  and  the  denial  of  all  pre-eminence  in  the 
Church  of  Rome.  The  council  moreover  was  held  in 
order  to  absolve  Athanasius,  but  in  341  another 
council,  entirely  composed  of  oriental  bishops  was 
held  at  Antioch  and  reaffirmed,  though  in  a  somewhat 
attenuated  form,  the  principles  of  Arianism. 

The  struggle  between  Arianism  and  Athanasianism 
was  becoming  a  struggle  between  the  East  and  the 
West  which  involved  the  two  emperors,  each  side 
endeavouring  to  use  to  its  own  advantage  the  author- 
ity of  the  Augustus  who  was  its  ruler.  Unhappily  for 
Arianism,  Constans,  who  had  taken  the  provinces  of 
Constantine  II.,  was  at  this  moment  more  powerful 
than  Constantius  who  was  involved  in  the  long  war 
against  Persia.  Thus  when,  towards  the  end  of  342, 
or  in  343,  Constans  proposed  to  his  brother  that  an 
oecumenical  council  should  be  held  at  Sardica  (Sofia) 
on  the  frontiers  of  the  two  empires,  in  order  if  possible 
to  settle  these  differences,  Constantius  could  not  refuse. 


Councils  of  Sardica  and  Philip popolis  433 

It  is  probable  that  Constans  was  aiming  at  a  declara- 
tion by  the  council  of  the  supremacy  of  the  Church  of 
Rome,  which  politically  would  be  very  advantageous 
to  him,  rather  than  at  settling  the  position  of  Athan- 
asius  in  the  Church  or  confirming  the  Nicene  Creed. 
In  any  case  it  is  certain  that  the  great  object  of 
the  oriental  bishops  was  to  evade  the  question  of  the 
Roman  Church  and  in  this  they  succeeded.  On  the 
pretext  of  the  intervention  of  Athanasius  and  of  other 
religious  accused  of  heresy,  they  withdrew  and  met 
in  a  separate  council  at  Philippopolis  (344)  protest- 
ing against  the  pretensions  of  the  Western  Church 
to  reverse  sentences  of  an  oriental  council,  and  ex- 
communicating, not  only  Athanasius,  but  Pope  Julius 
himself. 

The  excommunication  was  counterbalanced  by  a 
letter  addressed  to  the  excommunicated  by  the  or- 
thodox bishops  of  the  East  and  the  West.  That  letter, 
while  it  recognized  that  within  certain  limits  the  civil 
power  had  its  rights  in  connection  with  councils, 
solemnly  affirmed  the  deference  of  the  writers  for  the 
See  of  Rome  and  "in  honour  of  the  memory  of  Peter" 
conferred  on  that  See  the  right  of  deciding  all  appeals 
from  condemnations  pronounced  by  other  bishops. 
The  Church  of  Rome  was  thus  declared  to  be  the 
centre  of  orthodox  Christianity.  The  Fathers  of 
Philippopolis,  on  the  other  hand,  declared  in  a  circular 
letter,  not  only  that  they  did  not  recognize  the  suprem- 
acy of  the  Church  of  Rome,  but  that  they  would 
recognize  no  other  power  in  the  spiritual  governance 
of  the  Church  except  that  of  Councils.  That  is  to 
say,  they  admitted  no  authority  which  could  judge 
between  the  different  churches  and  which  was  superior 
to  theirs,  except  that  of  the  emperor  who  was  their 

VOL.    II  —  28 


434  ^^^  Great  Religious  Struggles 

protector.  Thus  came  into  being  the  schismatic 
Eastern  Church.'  About  the  same  time  all  pagan 
temples  were  ordered  to  be  closed  and  the  old  religion 
declared  criminal  and  punishable.^ 

141.  Constantius  Sole  Emperor  (353  A.D.).  The 
Great  Council  of  Milan  (355  A.D.).  The  decisions  of 
the  Council  of  Sardica,  in  spite  of  these  declarations, 
applied  to  the  East  as  well  as  to  the  West.  Constans, 
taking  advantage  of  the  difficulties  in  which  Constan- 
tius found  himself,  owing  to  the  interminable  war 
with  Persia,  succeeded  in  securing  the  reinstatement 
of  Athanasius  in  the  See  of  Alexandria  and  the  cessa- 
tion throughout  all  the  East  of  the  persecution  of  the 
partisans  of  the  Nicene  Creed.  For  a  moment  the 
unity  of  the  Church  seemed  to  have  been  re-established. 
But  this  result  had  been  secured  by  political  pressure 
of  the  West  on  the  East,  a  dangerous  expedient  which 
contained  the  germs  of  a  civil  war  between  the  two 
emperors.  Chance  alone  prevented  the  world  from 
seeing  the  sons  of  Constantine  at  war  on  a  theological 
question.  One  day,  while  Constans  was  hunting,  his 
magister  militum,  a  certain  Magnentius  who  was  a  bar- 
barian of  German  origin  and  had  an  understanding 
with  the  comes  largitionum,  was  proclaimed  Augustus 
and  the  legitimate  emperor  was  murdered  (January 
18,  350).  Shortly  afterwards  in  lUyricum,  the  pro- 
vince which  still  remembered  that  it  had  given  the 
empire  the  greatest  princes  of  the  third  century, 
another  usurper  named  Vetranio  followed  the  example 
of  Magnentius  (March  i,  350). 

'  On  all  this  part  of  the  history  of  Christianity  the  reader 
may  consult  Duchesne,  Histoire  de  I'Eglise,  Paris,  191 1,  vol.  ii., 
chapter  vi. 

^  Cod.  Theod.,  xvi.,  10,  4. 


The  Great  Council  of  Milan  435 

This  time  Constantius  determined  to  suspend  the 
Persian  war  by  concluding  an  armistice,  and,  at  the 
end  of  350  or  early  in  351,  he  moved  against  Mace- 
donia with  great  forces.  By  means  of  bribery  and 
intrigues,  and  by  arousing  memories  of  his  father 
among  the  legionaries,  he  managed  to  win  over  the 
Army  of  Vetranio  and  to  persuade  Vetranio  finally 
to  renounce  the  purple.  He  then  prepared  to  make 
war  on  Magnentius  who  appears  to  have  tried  to  find 
support  among  the  pagans  who  had  been  persecuted 
by  Constans.  Magnentius  was  a  more  formidable 
opponent  than  Vetranio,  and  Constantius  had  to 
fight  for  two  years  before  he  was  overthrown.  After 
the  battle  of  Mursa  (in  Pannonia)  fought  on  Septem- 
ber 28,  351,  the  usurper  was  forced  to  retire  on  Aqui- 
leia,  where  he  passed  the  winter,  hoping  to  be  able  to 
bar  the  passes  of  the  Alps  against  his  enemies.  These, 
however,  were  forced  in  the  following  year.  Magnen- 
tius was  thrown  back  on  the  Cottian  Alps  and  from 
there  into  Gaul.  At  Lyons  he  was  abandoned  by  his 
army  and  committed  suicide.  All  his  family  was  put 
to  death  and  with  them  a  great  number  of  his  parti- 
sans, real  or  supposed. 

The  unity  of  the  empire  was  re-established,  and  this 
political  event  had  an  immediate  effect  in  the  religious 
sphere  both  Christian  and  pagan.  The  defeat  of 
Magnentius  was  followed  by  an  exacerbated  perse- 
cution of  paganism,  those  who  practised  the  ancient 
religion  being  threatened  with  decapitation.'  On  the 
other  hand  the  disappearance  of  Constans  was  a 
piece  of  great  good  fortune  for  the  Arians.  Before 
long  their  intrigues  against  Athanasius  and  the 
Bishops  who  upheld  the  Council  of  Nice,  encouraged 

'  Cod.  TJteod.,  xvi.,  lo,  6. 


436  The  Great  Religious  Struggles 

by  the  favour  of  the  emperor,  threw  the  whole  Chris- 
tian world  into  such  confusion  that  Pope  Liberius 
begged  the  emperor  to  convoke  a  council  to  compose 
the  ttmiult.  Constantius  agreed  and  summoned  a 
council  at  Milan  but  his  intention  was  far  from  being 
the  same  as  the  Pope's.  What  he  wished  was  to  annul 
finally  the  council  of  Nice  and  to  establish  at  any  cost 
the  supremacy  of  Eastern  over  Western  Christianity. 
At  the  beginning  of  355  fully  350  bishops  actually 
met  at  Milan,  practically  all  of  them  from  the  West, 
and  therefore  supporters  of  the  Nicene  creed.  Con- 
stantius, however,  now  that  he  was  sole  emperor,  felt 
himself  strong  enough  to  overcome  the  opposition  and 
threw  all  the  weight  of  his  authority  into  the  balance. 
He  intervened  personally  and  openly,  and  pronounced 
the  famous  words  which  marked  an  epoch  in  the  early 
history  of  the  Church :  ' '  My  will  must  be  considered 
as  law.  My  Syrian  bishops  see  fit  that  I  should  speak 
thus.  Either  you  will  obey  me,  or  those  of  you  who 
do  not  obey  will  be  condemned  to  banishment.  .  .  ."' 
This  was  no  vain  threat.  Those  who  would  not  agree 
to  the  condemnation  of  Athanasius,  including  the 
Pope  Liberius  himself,  were  forced  to  go  into  exile, 
and  Athanasius,  condemned  by  the  council  of  Milan, 
took  refuge  in  the  monasteries  of  the  Thebaid.  In 
the  East  and  in  the  West  alike  all  the  bishops  who 
remained  faithful  to  the  Nicene  Creed  were  deposed, 
persecuted,  and  threatened.  But  at  Constantinople, 
at  Alexandria,  at  Rome,  at  Naples,  and  in  Gaul  popu- 
lar insurrections  broke  out  against  the  bishops  sub- 
stittited  for  those  who  had  been  banished  and  a  new 
politico-religious  war  was  soon  raging  between  the 
West  and  the  East. 

'  Athan.,  Hist.  Arianorum,  xxxiii. 


Gallus  and  Julianus  Ccesars  437 

142.     Gallus  and  Julianus  Caesars  (351-355  A.D.). 

The  unification  of  the  empire  had  produced  another 
consequence,  the  necessity  of  finding  lieutenants  for 
the  emperor.  Constantius  -was  not  equal  to  ruling 
the  empire  as  constituted  by  Diocletian  and  by  his 
father,  without  assistance.  Yet  it  was  no  easy  task  to 
find  a  competent  and  trustworthy  collaborator  in  a 
coiu't  such  as  his.  For  want  of  better  Constantius, 
who  had  no  son,  had  recourse  to  Gallus  the  elder  of  his 
two  cousins,  who  had  miraculously  escaped  from  the 
massacre  of  332.  Gallus  and  his  brother  Julian  had 
hitherto  lived  in  exile  which  bore  a  close  resemblance 
to  imprisonment,  one  at  Ephesus  and  the  other  at 
Nicomedia.  More  recently  they  had  botli  lived 
together  at  Macellum,  a  lonely  spot  in  Cappadocia. 
Gallus,  then  25  or  26  years  of  age  was  appointed 
CcBsar  in  351  and  was  entrusted  with  the  govern- 
ment of  the  East.  But  Constantius  was  a  very  sus- 
picious monarch.  After  making  Gallus  swear  fealty 
on  the  four  Gospels  he  had  imposed  on  him  a  min- 
ister chosen  by  himself  for  the  purpose  of  keeping 
watch  on  him,  had  given  him  in  marriage  his  sister 
Constantina,  and  had  reserved  to  himself  the  appoint- 
ment of  all  the  chief  officers  and  functionaries  of 
Callus's  army  and  of  the  Eastern  court.  Notwith- 
standing all  these  precautions,  or  perhaps  because  of 
them,  this  experiment  in  collaboration  ended  in  disas- 
ter. Gallus  could  not  reconcile  himself  to  this  super- 
vision and  suspicion,  which  he  could  not  overcome. 
Moreover  he  was  a  man  of  feeble  abilities.  His 
relations  with  the  emperor  became  inflamed  to  such 
a  pitch  of  distrust  and  hatred  that  after  three  years 
he  was  recalled  and  while  on  his  return  journey 
about   the  end  of  354  was  imprisoned  and  executed 


438         The  Great  Religious  Struggles 

at  Pola,  together  with  many  of  his  friends  and  sup- 
porters. 

Meanwhile  grave  difficulties  had  arisen  in  the  West, 
where,  after  the  execution  of  Gallus  at  Pola  in  354  and 
while  Constantius  was  preparing  for  the  great  council 
of  Milan,  the  eastern  German  tribes  had  seized  the 
two  Germanics  and  all  eastern  Gaul  from  the  Lake 
of  Constance  to  the  North  Sea,  and  had  penetrated 
into  the  interior,  devastating  the  country  and  dis- 
mantling two  fortresses.  Constantius  had  to  find  a 
general  for  the  West  also,  and  notwithstanding  his 
misadventure  with  Gallus,  whether  because  he  had  no 
choice  or  because  of  the  intercession  of  his  Empress, 
the  gentle  Eusebia,  his  choice  fell  on  Callus's  brother 
Julian.  After  all,  Gallus  had  been  incapable  rather 
than  rebellious,  and  Julian,  a  harmless  person  of 
literary  leanings,  was  intended  merely  to  be  the  em- 
peror's nominal  representative.  The  actual  power 
was  to  be  in  the  hands  of  the  persons  whom  Con- 
stantius meant  to  place  by  his  side.  Thus  the  exile  of 
Macellum  was  created  a  Cassar  towards  the  end  of 
355,  and  was  charged  with  the  government  of  Gaul, 
Spain,  and  Britain. 

143.  Julian  in  Gaul — the  First  Four  Years  (355- 
359  A.D.).  Julian  was  not  yet  twenty-five  and  had 
no  political  or  military  experience.  His  youth  had 
been  spent  in  enforced  exile  among  books,  in  long, 
silent  colloquies  with  Homer,  Hesiod,  and  Plato,  in  the 
most  humiliating  observances  of  Christianity,  in  the 
memory  of  the  blood  which  he  had  seen  shed  so  pro- 
fusely in  the  days  of  his  boyhood  and  under  the  es- 
pionage of  a  thousand  hostile  eyes.  And  yet  in  his 
brain  nourished  on  rhetoric  and  philosophy,  in  his 
heart  which  had  been  humbled  b}^  persecutions,  in 


Julian  in  Gaul — the  First  Four   Years  439 

his  frail  and  ailing  body  were  concealed  extraordinary 
will  power  and  passionate  energy'. 

The  campaign  which  he  conducted  in  Gaul  was 
destined  to  be  a  revelation  indeed.  In  the  philosopher 
there  was  the  stuff  of  which  great  soldiers  are  made. 
In  a  few  months  he  had  learned  the  rudiments  of  the 
military  art.  Real  war  with  its  perils  and  its  surprises 
had  revealed  him  to  himself  and  to  others.  The 
generals  of  Constantius  were  cautious  and  methodical ; 
they  allowed  the  barbarians  to  lay  waste  the  country 
under  their  very  eyes  rather  than  risk  any  enterprise 
in  which  they  were  not  secured  by  a  superiority  of 
force.  Julian  saw  at  once  that  it  was  necessary  to  act, 
to  take  risks,  and  to  exploit  the  local  forces  which 
were  so  valuable.  In  356,  hearing  that  Autun  was 
threatened  by  the  barbarians,  he  hastened  to  its 
assistance  and  raised  the  siege.  Then  by  a  rapid 
march  he  regained  the  valley  of  the  Rhine,  extricated 
Colonia  (Cologne),  and  fortified  both  that  town  and 
Treveri  (Treves),  reoccupied  Argentoratum  (Stras- 
bourg), and  in  mid- winter  maintained  vigorous  siege 
operations  before  Sens.  In  all  this  he  received  no 
support  from  Marcellus,  the  general  attached  to  his 
staff  by  Constantius.  In  the  following  year  (357), 
though  again  badly  seconded  by  his  generals,  he 
succeeded  in  taking  prisoners  a  great  nimiber  of 
barbarians  on  their  return  from  an  unsuccessful 
attempt  on  Lyons.  Then  having  driven  another 
barbarian  force  across  the  Rhine,  he  followed  them 
by  fording  the  river  between  a  series  of  islets  in  the 
stream  and  defeated  them  with  immense  slaughter. 
Finally  at  Argentoratum,  in  the  stunmer  of  357,  with 
only  13,000  men,  he  was  faced  by  a  German  army  of 
three  times  that  number  which  a  few  days  before  had 


440         The  Great  Religious  Struggles 

defeated  25,000  men  led  by  one  of  the  most  experienced 
generals  of  Constantius.  The  legions  of  JuHan  who 
were  now  trained  soldiers  attacked  and  defeated  the 
enemy  after  a  day's  battle. 

Nor  was  his  attention  confined  to  military  opera- 
tions. He  revived  the  ancient  Roman  flotilla  on  the 
Rhine,  whose  remaining  vessels  were  lying  idle,  and 
caused  four  hundred  new  ships  to  be  built.  He 
completely  cleared  both  the  banks  of  the  river  of  the 
surviving  barbarians;  he  rebuilt  the  fortresses  which 
had  been  destroyed,  compelled  the  barbarians  them- 
selves to  provide  the  materials  and  the  necessary 
labour;  repopulated  with  his  prisoners  the  deserted 
districts  of  Gaul,  reduced  to  a  quarter  the  poll  tax 
{capitatio)  paid  by  the  province,  personally  assumed 
the  administration  of  the  ruined  districts,  dismissing 
all  the  agents  of  the  treasury  and  carrying  out  the 
collection  of  the  taxes  himself.  In  the  second  half  of 
359  he  pushed  far  forward  into  enemy  territory  in 
upper  Germany  and  there,  like  Julius  Cassar  of  old, 
he  impressed  on  the  minds  of  the  population  the  lively 
conviction  that  Rome  had  still  a  sword. 

At  the  end  of  the  year  he  might,  as  he  actually  did 
in  later  days,  sum  up  the  results  of  his  campaign  in 
the  very  style  of  Napoleon.  "I  have  three  times 
crossed  the  Rhine.  I  have  taken  from  the  barbarians 
and  brought  back  20,000  prisoners.  Two  battles  and 
a  siege  have  made  me  master  of  1000  enemies  in  the 
flower  of  their  age.  ...  I  have  recaptured  not  less 
than  forty  cities,  and  by  the  favour  of  the  gods  all 
the  Gauls  lie  at  my  feet.  .  .  ."^ 

144.  The  End  of  Constantius  (359-361  A.D.).  But 
in  359  the    Persian    danger  reappeared.     Sapor   II, 

■  Jul.,  Epist.  ad  S.  P.  Q.  Athen.,  p.  280  c-d. 


The  End  of  Constantius  441 

renewed  his  pretensions  to  Armenia  and  Mesopo- 
tamia, and  this  time,  it  seems,  with  greater  forces 
and  with  better  fortune  than  in  previous  years.  He 
succeeded  in  capturing  the  fortress  of  Amida  and, 
returning  to  the  attack  in  the  following  winter,  also 
those  of  Bezabda  and  Singara  which  he  hastened  to 
destroy. 

Constantius  even  in  this  crisis  was  chiefly  intent  on 
imposing  religious  unity  on  the  empire.  In  359  the 
two  councils  of  Rimini  and  Seleucia  Isaurica,  owing  to 
imperial  pressure,  were  induced  to  sanction  in  place 
of  the  Nicene  Creed  a  vague  and  inexact  formula 
whereby,  under  pretence  of  reconciliation,  the  Arians 
hoped  to  make  themselves  finally  masters  of  the 
government  of  the  Church.  For  the  public  at  large 
theological  formulae  were  nothing  but  banners  under 
which  were  grouped  the  interests  or  the  passions  of 
mankind.  Thus,  when  Constantius  insisted  on  im- 
posing on  everybody  the  agreed  Arian  formula,  he 
found  the  whole  empire  ablaze  with  countless  popular 
revolts.  The  new  Persian  attack,  however,  compelled 
him  to  turn  his  attention  from  religious  disputes.  He 
left  Milan,  sent  Julian  an  order  to  send  him  part  of 
his  forces  and  left  for  the  East.  But  this  order  to 
Julian  was  destined  to  be  the  spark  which  kindled  a 
new  civil  war.  Whether  because  the  legions  of  Gaul 
were  profoundly  attached  to  their  general  or  because 
they  were  for  the  most  part  men  of  Gallic  race  who 
felt  the}^  had  been  enrolled  to  defend  their  own 
country  against  the  Germans  and  not  to  be  sent  to 
die  in  the  depths  of  Asia,  a  military  revolt  broke 
out  when  the  order  of  Constantius  was  promulgated 
and  Julian  was  proclaimed  Augustus.  The  youthful 
Cgesar  hesitated  for  a  time  and  tried  to  resist  the 


442         The  Great  Religious  Struggles 

acclamations  of  his  soldiers.  But  his  good  genius  did 
not  allow  him  to  persist  in  this  impossible  and  danger- 
ous attitude,  and,  after  many  hours  of  irresolution,  he 
presented  himself  to  the  soldiers  and  declared  that 
he  was  ready  to  share  their  destinies. 

In  spite  of  this,  he  not  only  insisted  that  the  sup- 
porters and  the  emissaries  of  Constantius  should 
receive  no  injury  of  any  kind,  but  he  loyally  informed 
the  emperor  of  what  had  happened  and  represented 
that  it  was  the  legions  who  demanded  for  him  the 
title  of  Augustus.  Constantius  replied  by  making 
great  preparations  against  the  new  Magnentius.  But 
Julian  was  neither  a  Magnentius  nor  a  Gallus,  nor 
was  his  conciliatory  temper  to  be  confounded  with 
inertia  or  incapacity.  When  he  saw  that  the  emperor 
was  not  to  be  moved,  he  decided  to  anticipate  him 
and  to  raise  against  the  Augustus  of  the  East  not  only 
his  own  powerful  legions  but  also  the  hitherto  silent 
resentment  of  humiliated  paganism.  His  offensive 
from  Gaul  was  preceded  by  a  manifesto,  the  so-called 
Epistula  ad  Striatum  Populumque  Atheniensem ,  the 
effect  of  which  was  to  collect  under  his  standards  all 
the  pagans  throughout  the  empire.  Leaving  in  Gaul 
as  praetorian  prsefect  his  friend  Sallustius,  he  took  the 
offensive  with  lightning  rapidity,  dividing  his  army 
into  three  parts  which  were  to  reassemble  at  Sir- 
mium  in  Pannonia.  Constantius  in  great  haste  made 
an  armistice  with  the  Persians  and  set  out  on  his  way 
back  to  Europe.  But  at  Tarsus  he  was  seized  with  a 
violent  fever  and  shortly  afterwards,  on  October  5, 
361,  died  at  Mopsucrene. 

145.  The  Pagan  Reaction.  Julian  the  Apostate 
(361-363  A.D.).  When  Julian  reached  Constan- 
tinople  he   was  received   with   a  perfectly   delirious 


The  Pagan  Reaction.  Julian  the  Apostate  443 

enthusiasm.  The  people,  the  ministers  of  Constan- 
tius,  the  whole  court  came  out  to  meet  him  and  to 
swear  fealty  to  him  with  all  solemnity.  The  Roman 
senate  itself,  which  at  first  had  hesitated,  now  hastened 
to  send  him  the  senatus  consuUum-  which  conferred  on 
him  the  usual  imperial  honours  in  all  their  fullness. 
Pagans  and  Christians  were  equally  delighted.  The 
orthodox  rejoiced  at  the  death  of  the  man  who  for  so 
long  had  trampled  upon  them.  The  Arians  viewed  the 
change  with  tranquillity  in  the  belief  that  they  were 
now  strong  enough. 

The  fact  was  that  Julian  had  become  emperor  after 
about  thirty  years  of  a  government  which  had  dam- 
aged many  interests  and  which,  far  from  solving 
the  problems  by  which  it  was  confronted,  had  allowed 
them  to  grow  more  complicated.  In  these  thirt}' 
years  the  Persian  peril  had  become  a  chronic  evil  in 
the  East.  In  the  West,  the  barbarians  of  Germany 
had  been  allowed  to  overrun  the  most  flourishing 
regions  of  Gaul  without  let  or  hindrance.  On  the 
other  hand  the  provinces  had  begun  to  collapse  with 
exhaustion  under  the  enormous  burden  imposed  on 
them  by  the  system  of  tribute  which  now  weighed  on 
all  departments  of  production,  agriculture,  industry, 
and  commerce,  and  all  the  professions,  even  of  the 
basest  class,  alike.  The  religious  problem  itself  was 
unsolved.  The  anti-Christian  persecution  had  been 
followed  by  the  reaction  against  the  pagans,  and,  what 
was  worse,  against  all  the  sections  of  the  Christian 
faith  which  were  not  orthodox,  and  had  involved  in 
its  fury  the  substance,  the  good  name,  the  very  lives 
of  those  who  professed  such  opinions. 

Julian's  accession,  therefore,  came  at  an  opportune 
moment.    All  stood  still  to  see  whether  the  immense 


444         ^^^^  Great  Religions  Struggles 

disorder  of  the  empire  could  be  dominated  by  a  single 
man.  Julian's  aims  were  lofty  and  noble  even  to 
sublimity.  Like  Marcus  Aurelius,  his  was  to  be  the 
reign  of  a  philosopher.  Having  lived  in  the  midst  of 
intrigue,  violence,  and  injustice,  he  had  by  a  sort  of 
reaction  made  his  public  duty  a  cult,  a  mission  to 
fulfil,  a  destiny  to  accomplish.  "We  should,"  he  wrote, 
"in  all  things  draw  inspiration  from  the  immortal 
essence  which  lives  within  us,  and  to  this  entrust  the 
government  of  our  private  affairs  no  less  than  that  of 
States.  We  should  consider  law  as  the  application  of 
universal  reason.  ...  A  prince,  who  after  all  is  a 
man,  needs  to  spiritualize  his  sentiments  and  to  banish 
entirel}^  from  his  soul  all  that  it  contains  of  mortality, 
all  that  he  has  in  common  with  the  brutes.  .  .  .  He 
should  issue,  therefore,  not  rules  for  the  moment,  the 
work  of  a  man  who  has  not  lived  according  to  reason, 
but  laws  worthy  of  men  pure  in  heart  and  spirit,  who 
have  not  limited  their  consideration  to  the  evils  of 
today  and  to  present  circumstances  alone.  He  should 
legislate,  not  merely  for  his  contemporaries  but  for 
posterity,  for  foreigners,  for  men  with  whom  he  has 
not  nor  can  ever  hope  to  have  any  relation." 

This  account  exactly  fits  Julian  and  never  in  the 
case  of  any  other  ruler  did  theory  so  closely  approxi- 
mate to  practice.  Immediately  on  his  arrival  at 
Constantinople  he  purged  the  court  of  all  its  in- 
numerable parasites,  barbers,  cup-bearers,  cooks, 
eunuchs,  informers,  ushers,  secretaries,  domestics, 
pages,  gentlemen  of  the  wardrobe,  doctors.  He  re- 
duced his  staff  to  the  limits  of  bare  necessity  and 
took  the  financial  and  judicial  administration  into 
his  own  control  as  he  had  done  in  Gaul.  A  contem- 
porary not  accustomed  to  hyperbole  shortly  afterwards 


The  Pagan  Reaction.  Julian  the  Apostate  445 

wrote  of  him:  "It  might  really  have  been  supposed 
that  Justice  which,  according  to  some  poet,  returned 
to  heaven  owing  to  the  crimes  of  mankind,  had  once 
more  come  back  to  earth."  The  government  again 
resumed  a  republican  character.  Julian  refused  the 
title  of  dominiis;  he  again  observed  the  ceremonies 
which  were  formerly  carried  out  on  the  assumption  of 
republican  magistracies  and  he  honoured  the  senate  of 
Constantinople  as  Trajan  had  honoured  that  of  Rome. 
But  the  burning  question,  which  was  to  be  the 
touchstone  not  of  his  merit  but  of  the  possibility  of 
coping  with  the  growing  disorder  of  the  times,  was  the 
religious  problem.  Julian  did  not  consider  the  ques- 
tion of  Paganism  and  Christianity  as  a  philosophical, 
but  (being  a  soldier  and  a  statesman)  as  a  political  and 
social  problem.  He  could  not  know  that  Christianity 
was  the  sacred  seed  of  a  new  world.  For  him,  there- 
fore, it  was  clear  that  the  new  religion  was  one  more 
force  of  dissolution  among  the  many  which  were 
already  working  for  the  disruption  of  the  empire. 
In  spite  of  the  efforts  made  by  the  Church  to  minimize 
the  contradiction,  it  was  evident  that  the  spirit  of 
Christianity  was  in  conflict  with  that  which  for  cen- 
turies had  sustained  the  Roman  State.  The  need 
for  conquest  and  dominion,  the  contrast  between  the 
barbarian  and  the  Roman  world,  the  great  mission  of 
Rome  in  the  world,  the  sacred  duty  of  marrying  and 
having  children,  the  subordination  of  the  individual 
to  the  State,  the  civic  and  political  consciousness — all 
these  corresponded  to  sentiments  and  ideas  which 
Christianity  either  openly  combated  or  tacitly  de- 
spised. Moreover,  the  ancient  State  had  absorbed 
into  itself  so  much  religion  as  was  necessary  to  conse- 
crate its  civil  and  political  mission.     Apart  from  this 


44^         The  Great  Religious  Struggles 

it  was  above  all  religions  and  exercised  impartially 
over  all  a  purely  civil  control.  The  Christian  church 
on  the  contrary  believed  that  the  world  was  ruled  by 
Providence,  not  with  a  view  to  its  temporal  interests 
but  to  higher  and  divine  plans,  that,  if  the  citizens  of 
the  empire  served  the  emperor,  he  was  the  servant  of 
God  and  as  such  was  subordinate  to  the  Church  which 
was  God's  representative  on  earth.  Though  the 
weakness  of  the  new  religion  compelled  it  to  recognize 
the  supremacy  of  the  State  it  cherished  an  inveterate 
aspiration  to  make  the  State  its  instrument. 

This  being  so,  there  is  nothing  surprising  in  the  fact 
that  a  Roman  emperor  who  had  received  a  thorough 
training  in  philosophy  should  have  conceived  it  to  be 
his  duty  to  re-establish  paganism  and  to  reform  the 
relations  between  the  empire  and  the  Church.  Julian 
accordingly  did  not  renew  the  persecutions,  and  re- 
sumed the  old  formula  of  the  pagan  State  which  in  its 
essence  had  been  reaffirmed  by  Constantine,  viz.,  that 
paganism  was  the  State  religion,  while  all  other  re- 
ligions were  tolerated.  But  he  interpreted  this  for- 
mula in  its  fullest  sense,  that  is  to  say  that  the  pagan 
State  could  not  be  indifferent  to  its  religion,  that  it 
must  have  a  religious  faith  beyond  the  reach  of  any 
philosophical  criticism,  not  a  system  of  dogma  and 
mjrthology  but  a  strong  moral  consciousness  common 
to  all  who  were  associated  with  it.  This  was  no  new 
idea;  the  views  and  the  practice  of  Augustus,  Ves- 
pasian, and  Trajan  were  precisely  similar.  The  only 
difference  was  that,  in  the  presence  of  an  enemy  now 
become  much  more  menacing,  Julian's  work  had  to  be 
much  more  energetic  and  concise. 

In  order  to  place  the  religions  which  lived  under  the 
shadow  of  the  empire  on  a  footing  of  equality  it  was 


The  Paga7i  Reactioti.  Julian  the  Apostate  447 

in  the  first  place  necessary  to  abolish  the  privileges 
which  had  been  gained  by  the  Christian  Church,  to 
put  an  end  to  the  persecution  it  was  carrying  on  and 
to  repair  the  damage  it  had  done.  Julian  ordered  that 
all  property  usurped  by  the  church  should  be  restored 
to  the  ancient  organization  which  had  been  despoiled, 
that  all  ecclesiastics  who  had  been  banished  as  heretics 
should  be  recalled,  and  that  the  privileges  of  the 
clergy  should  be  abolished. 

This,  however,  was  merely  the  beginning.  In  order 
to  recreate  the  soul  of  Roman  paganism  it  was  neces- 
sary to  invoke  the  help  and  collaboration  of  the  men 
of  letters,  the  schools  and  the  clergy,  of  society  as  a 
whole.'  Julian  therefore  claimed  that  pagan  culture 
and  education  should  resimie  their  ancient  mission 
while  the  pagan  priesthood  should  adopt  all  the  virtues 
and  methods,  which  had  been  found  in  practice  to  be 
excellent,  of  Christian  propaganda.  He  sought  to  give 
paganism  an  official  organization  and  an  equipment 
of  philanthropic  institutions  in  all  respects  similar  to 
those  of  Christianity.  Against  an  exclusive  doctrine 
exclusion  is  a  weapon  to  which  its  opponents  must 
sooner  or  later  inevitably  have  recourse.  If  the  schools 
were  to  be  a  kind  of  temple  of  Roman  paganism  it  was 
necessary  to  exclude  Christian  masters  and  to  permit 
these  to  exercise  their  profession  only  in  Christian 
schools.^  If  every  office  of  State,  and  above  all  mili- 
tary offices,  were  to  be  carried  out  in  entire  corre- 

'  Cf.  Liban.,  Oral.,  xviii.,  p.  574.  Sozom.,  Hist.  Eccles.,  v.,  16; 
and  Julian  himself,  Epp.,  49,  62  &  63. 

'  Julian's  famous  edict  on  education,  as  one  might  expect,  is 
not  included  in  the  oflficial  codices  but  in  the  private  collection  of 
his  letters  (Jul.,  Epp.,  42).  Cf.  also  Amm.  Marc,  xxii.,  10,  7;  xxv., 
4,  20. 


44^         The  Great  Religious  Struggles 

spondence  with  the  emperor's  plan  it  was  necessary  to 
return  to  Diocletian's  policy  of  excluding  Christians 
from  the  magistracies  and  from  the  army. 

But  was  it  possible  that  the  new  religion  could 
have  meekly  tolerated  all  this?  While  a  few  pure 
and  unbending  Christians  applauded  the  imperial 
restrictions  which  preserved  Christianity  from  all 
contaminating  contact  with  the  infidel,'  the  mass 
of  pagans,  who  were  both  weary  and  sceptical,  dis- 
approved of  the  fighting  spirit  of  their  prince.  On  the 
other  hand  the  numerous  band  which  represented  the 
ideals,  the  passions,  the  interests,  and  the  privileges 
of  the  Christians  which  were  all  alike  threatened,  rose 
in  revolt.  These  first  measures  were  followed,  more 
especially  in  the  East,  by  seditions,  broils,  conflicts 
between  pagans  and  Christians  and  between  Chris- 
tians who  differed  among  themselves.  In  spite  of  the 
lofty  spirit  of  concord  and  pacification  with  which 
Julian  was  animated,  his  reforms  would  have  kindled 
terrible  discord  throughout  the  empire  had  he  been 
permitted  by  fate  to  continue  his  work  for  any  length 
of  time. 

146.  The  Great  Expedition  to  Persia  (March- June, 
363  A.D.).  Julian,  however,  was  not  the  man  to 
give  his  whole  attention  to  the  religious  question. 
Since  362  he  had  been  preparing  a  military  expedition 
on  a  gigantic  scale  which  aimed  at  removing  the 
Persian  danger  for  ever,  at  reducing  Persia  to  the 
status  of  a  vassal  kingdom  like  Armenia  and  at  re- 
newing to  all  intents  and  purposes  the  unsuccessful 
attempt  of  Trajan.  For  this  purpose  the  emperor 
had  got  ready  a  powerful  river  flotilla,  a  perfected 
artillery,  and  a  veteran  army.  He  had  1000  transports, 

•  Cf.  Socrat.,  Hist.  EccL,  iii.,  16. 


The  Great  Expedition  to  Persia       449 

50  war  galleys,  50  pontoons,  and  100,000  men,  besides 
auxiliaries  from  Armenia.  His  strategical  plan  was 
also  a  repetition  of  the  old  and  excellent  scheme 
devised  by  Trajan,  an  invasion  of  Persia  from  two 
sides  and  with  two  armies,  which  were  to  unite  on 
the  left  bank  of  the  Tigris  and  thence  advance  to- 
gether to  the  conquest  of  the  interior. 

The  campaign  began  well.  All  the  forts  on  the 
Euphrates  were  either  stormed  or  reduced  to  surren- 
der, and  the  army  was  transported  without  mishap 
from  the  Euphrates  to  the  Tigris,  and  from  the  right 
to  the  left  bank  of  the  latter  river.  In  two  months 
of  constant  and  ever  victorious  fighting  Julian  had 
arrived  practically  at  the  gates  of  Ctesiphon.  The 
other  portion  of  his  army,  however,  which  with  the 
Armenian  contingents  had  marched  through  upper 
Mesopotamia  and  was  coming  south  along  the  left 
bank  of  the  Tigris,  was  still  too  far  off.  Julian,  there- 
fore, did  not  immediately  attack  Ctesiphon,  which 
was  the  greatest  of  the  Persian  fortresses,  but  turned 
back  towards  the  north-east,  in  order  to  meet  the  other 
expeditionary  forces  and  to  try  to  get  behind  the 
Persian  army,  thus  giving  occasion  for  a  pitched 
battle.  For  this  purpose  it  was  necessary  to  get  rid 
of  the  embarrassment  of  the  fleet  which  would  have 
immobilized  a  full  third  of  the  60,000  men  at  Julian's 
disposal.  He  did  not  hesitate.  The  army  having 
burned  the  ships  turned  towards  the  north,  followed 
by  the  Persians  who  resumed  the  ancient  tactics 
used  by  the  Scythians  against  Darius  I.,  which  con- 
sisted in  burning  the  surrounding  villages  and  the 
face  of  the  country,  at  the  same  time  harassing  the 
enemy  and  then  retreating  rapidly  so  as  to  be  invisible 
and  unattainable.    On  the  26th  of  June,  during  a  new 

VOL.    II — 29 


450         The  Great  Religious  Struggles 

Persian  attack  in  the  course  of  which  the  Roman 
troops  repulsed  the  enemy  with  enormous  loss,  a  dart 
launched  by  an  unknown  hand  struck  the  emperor 
in  the  side,  inflicting  a  mortal  wound,  while  he  was 
fighting  as  a  common  soldier  among  the  rest  without 
even  the  protection  of  a  cuirass.^ 

■  On  the  personality  and  work  of  Julian,  cj.  G.  Boissier,  La  fin 
duPaganisme,  Paris,  1907,  vol.  i.,  pp.  85-147;  G.  Negri,  Giuliano 
I'Apostata,  Milan,  1902;  C.  Barbagallo,  Giuliano  I'Apostata, 
Genoa,  1912;  Lo  Stato  e  I'Istruzione pubblicaneW  impero  Romano, 
pp.  239-280.  Many  fabulous  accounts  of  the  Persian  expedition 
were  circulated  after  Julian's  death  which  have  ended  by  giving 
it  a  tragic  character.  It  is  clear  from  the  original  sources  that  at 
the  time  of  Julian's  death  the  Roman  army  was  in  excellent 
condition  and  that  the  failure  of  the  enterprise  was  entirely  due  to 
the  emperor  being  killed. 


CHAPTER   XVIII 

THE   INVASION    RESUMED 
(363-393  A.D.) 

147.     Jovian,  Valentinian,    and    Valens    (363-375 

A.D.).  On  the  death  of  Julian  steps  had  to  be  taken 
to  hold  another  imperial  election.  At  first  a  council 
of  generals  was  held  in  which  there  was  a  long  and 
inconclusive  discussion.  Then  suddenly  a  group  of 
Christian  soldiers  fell  to  acclaiming  one  of  the  com- 
manders of  the  imperial  guard  who  was  destined  to 
be  known  in  history  as  the  emperor  Jovian.  Amid  the 
general  discord  and  uncertainty  this  solution  was  ac- 
cepted. But  the  new  prince  had  none  of  the  qualities 
which  were  demanded  by  the  critical  character  of  the 
time.  What  was  still  more  disastrous  the  death  of 
Julian  had  struck  terror  into  the  legions  who  were 
already  anxious,  and  on  such  an  army  and  such  an 
emperor  Sapor  had  no  difficulty  in  imposing  a  peace 
highly  advantageous  to  himself.  He  secured  the 
abandonment  of  the  Roman  conquests  made  in  the 
time  of  Diocletian  whereby  the  empire  lost  the  five 
provinces  beyond  the  Tigris,'  including  the  fortresses 
of  Mesopotamia  and  Armenia,  the  advanced  guards 
of  the  Roman  power  in  the  East. 

Peace,   therefore,   had  delivered   Persia  from   the 
451 


452  The  Invasion  Resumed 

dangers  which  might  have  arisen  from  the  imminent 
junction  of  the  army  of  the  Tigris  with  the  army 
of  Armenia.  That  junction  actually  took  place  at 
Tilsafata  in  Lower  Armenia,  but  Procopius,  the  gen- 
eral who  had  been  so  late  in  arriving,  was  imme- 
diately directed  to  convey  the  ashes  of  Julian  to 
Tarsus.  Some  months  later  Jovian  died  at  Dadar- 
tana  in  Bithynia  without  having  been  able  even  to 
bring  his  army  home,  and  leaving  behind  him,  be- 
yond the  melancholy  disgrace  of  the  peace  with 
Persia,  nothing  but  the  memory  of  a  new  religious 
edict  whereby  he  replaced  the  Christians  in  the 
privileged  position  which  Julian  had  thought  it  neces- 
sary to  modify. 

The  new  council  of  generals  which  was  held  at 
Nicaea  on  February  26,  364,  chose  as  his  successor 
Valentinian,  also  a  native  of  Pannonia,  and  another  of 
the  higher  officers  of  the  guard.  At  the  request  of  the 
soldiers  Valentinian  nominated  as  a  second  Augustus 
his  brother  Valens  and  divided  the  empire  with  him, 
taking  the  West  for  himself  and  assigning  the  East  to 
Valens  (March  28,  364).  He  hastened  to  promul- 
gate laws  of  religious  toleration  which,  for  their  im- 
partial character,  may  be  compared  with  the  Milan 
edict  of  313.  This  time,  however,  the  measure  was  not 
for  the  benefit  of  Christianity  but  of  Paganism  and  in 
a  measure  it  justified  the  policy  of  Julian.  Valentin- 
ian deliberately  took  up  the  position  of  being  above 
and  outside  all  theological  controversy,  and  his  one 
object  was  to  prevent  either  party  from  forcibly  dom- 
inating the  other.  ^  He  created  a  new  magistracy,  that 
of  the  defensor  civitatis,  whose  chief  duty  was  to  protect 
the  lower  classes  against  the  aggressions  of  the  rich — 

'  Cod.  Theod.,  ix.,  16,  9,     Amm,  Marc,  xxx.,  9,  5. 


Jovian,    Valentinian,  and  Valens      453 

a  plain  confession  of  the  growing  impotence  of  the 
laws  and  of  the  State.  Above  all  he  made  provision 
for  the  defence  of  the  western  provinces,  which  were 
now  ever  more  seriously  threatened,  against  the  in- 
roads of  the  barbarians. 

In  365  the  empire  was  subjected  to  a  formidable 
German  attack,  evidently  preconcerted.  Gaul  and 
Rhaetia  were  simultaneously  assailed  by  the  Alamanni, 
the  two  Pannonias  by  the  Quadi  and  the  Sarmatians, 
Britain  by  the  Saxons,  the  Picts,  and  the  Scots,  the 
African  provinces  by  the  Gsetulians  and  the  Mauri, 
and  Thracia  by  the  Goths.  In  367  Valentinian  suc- 
ceeded in  inflicting  a  serious  defeat  on  the  Alamanni 
on  the  campi  Catalaimici  (near  Chalons-sur-Marne). 
In  368  he  invaded  their  territory,  did  his  best  by  in- 
trigues to  sow  discord  between  the  Alamanni  and  the 
Burgundi,  and  succeeded  so  well  that  he  managed  to 
conclude  peace,  granting  the  enemy  the  style  of  allies. 
On  the  other  hand,  in  order  to  subdue  the  Saxons  in 
Britain,  the  Picts  and  the  Scots  of  Ireland,  it  was 
necessary  to  send  a  capable  general  in  the  person  of  the 
Spaniard  Flavius  Theodosius.  After  three  years  of 
war  (368-370)  Theodosius  succeeded  in  re-establishing 
the  frontier  of  Hadrian.  He  then  went  to  Africa  where 
he  repressed  the  incursions  of  the  barbarians,  and  also 
a  rebellion  attempted  by  one  of  the  greatest  land- 
owners of  the  country  who  had  managed  to  get  him- 
self proclaimed  emperoi.  As  for  the  Quadi  and  the 
Sarmatians  they  penetrated  into  Pannonia  and 
massacred  the  Roman  legions  stationed  there;  but  the 
situation  was  saved  by  the  son  of  the  victor  of  Britain 
and  Africa  who  was  dux  in  Moesia  and  was  named 
Theodosius  like  his  father.  The  emperor  himself 
also  arrived  on  the  scene  but  not  for  long,  for,  in 


454  ^^^  Invasion  Resumed 

November,  375,  Valentinian  died  suddenly  in  the  plain 
of  Brigetium  in  Illyricum. 

148.  Gratian  and  Valentinian  II.;  the  New  War 
with  the  Goths  (375-378  A.D.).  Conditions  in  the 
Eastern  provinces  had  hitherto  been  less  difficult. 
Valens  had  had  to  repress  some  attempts  at  civil  war. 
He  had  had  some  trouble  with  the  Isaurians  and  the 
Persians  and  in  the  years  367-369  had  victoriously 
waged  a  little  war  against  the  Goths.  But  he  had 
found  time  and  means  withal  to  sustain  the  cause  of 
Arianism  against  the  Orthodoxy  of  the  West,  and  was 
heaping  fuel  on  the  flames  of  religious  discord,  when  in 
375  ^  grave  danger  arose  in  the  East.  Since  the  days 
of  Claudius  the  Goth,  the  Goths,  except  for  the  brief 
war  of  367-369,  had  left  the  empire  in  peace.  They 
still  held  practically  the  same  territory  between 
Transylvania  and  the  Don  which  had  been  theirs  in 
the  third  century,  and  they  were  divided  by  the  line 
of  the  Dniester  into  the  Grutungi  (the  future  Ostro- 
goths) and  the  Thervingi  (afterwards  known  as  the 
Visigoths) .  They  had  been  converted  to  Arian  Chris- 
tianity, had  attained  a  certain  measure  of  civilization 
and  had  grown  in  numbers,  riches,  and  power  by  the 
conquest  of  other  barbaric  peoples.  They  had  more- 
over entered  into  commercial  relations  with  the  Roman 
Empire  to  which  they  had  supplied  soldiers.  But  in 
375  these  barbarians  in  their  turn  were  visited  by  the 
scourge  of  a  rival  nation  more  barbarous  than  them- 
selves— the  Huns.  The  Huns  were  a  people  of  yellow 
race,  related  to  the  Mongols  of  later  days  who  scoured 
and  devastated  the  face  of  Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
and  also  to  the  Turks  and  Ottomans  who  came  still 
later,  and  to  the  modern  Chinese  and  Japanese.  Ter- 
rible things  are  related  of  the  Huns;  it  is  at  all  events 


Gratia  n  and   Valentinian  11.  455 

certain  that  they  were  a  very  numerous  and  a  very 
warlike  people.  In  their  movement  from  the  East 
towards  the  West  they  had  first  subdued  the  Alani  of 
the  Caucasus  accompanied  by  whom  they  attacked 
and  finally  conquered  the  Ostrogoths.  The  Visigoths, 
despairing  of  their  chances  of  successful  resistance 
asked  permission  of  the  Romans  to  retire  within  the 
ring  of  fortresses  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Danube 
(376).  Valens  did  not  think  fit  to  reject  this  request; 
he  merely  required  that  the  Goths  should  lay  down 
their  arms  and  undertake,  henceforth  without  annual 
remuneration,  to  serve  and  defend  the  empire  in  any 
contingency  that  might  arise.  On  the  other  hand, 
however,  the  imperial  government  had  assumed  the 
responsibility  for  feeding  a  very  large  population  and 
in  discharging  this  responsibility  so  many  controversies 
and  disputes  arose  that  the  Goths  became  exasperated 
and  finally  revolted  and  began  to  lay  waste  the  whole 
of  Thrace  as  far  as  the  Balkans  and  beyond  (377). 

In  the  West,  meanwhile,  the  officers  of  the  army  had 
raised  to  the  empire  Gratian  and  Valentinian  II.,  both 
of  whom  were  sons  of  Valentinian  I.,  though  by  differ- 
ent mothers.  To  them  or  rather  to  Gratian,  Valens 
at  once  appealed  for  aid.  But  Gratian  was  not  in  a 
position  to  respond  to  this  appeal,  for  no  sooner  had 
the  first  cohorts  begun  to  move  towards  the  East, 
than  the  Alamanni  swooped  down  on  Upper  Germany. 
Gratian,  therefore,  had  to  think  of  the  defence  of  his 
own  provinces  and  he  was,  in  fact,  able  to  inflict  a 
severe  defeat  on  the  Alamanni.  In  the.  meantime, 
however,  the  upper  portion  of  the  Balkan  peninsula 
fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Goths  and — what  was  more 
serious — their  Success  attracted  other  barbarians  such 
as  the  Ostrogoths,  the  Alani,  and  the  Huns  themselves. 


456  The  Invasion  Resumed 

to  share  in  the  booty.  Some  days  before  August  9, 
378,  a  great  council  of  war  was  held  at  which  it  was 
decided  to  risk  a  decisive  battle  with  the  enemy  who 
had  now  for  long  been  encamped  on  Roman  territory, 
before  the  arrival  of  Gratian  who,  having  conquered 
the  Alamanni,  was  preparing  to  come  to  their  assist- 
ance. This  must  have  been  the  tremendous  battle 
of  Adrianople  in  which  the  Romans  were  defeated  with 
terrible  losses,  their  emperor  himself  being  among  the 
victims  (August  9,  378). 

149.  Theodosius  and  the  Pacification  of  the  Balkan 
Peninsula  (378-382  A.D.).  The  consequences  of  this 
defeat  were  very  serious.  While  the  victors  over- 
flowed all  Thrace,  carrying  their  attacks  as  far  as 
Adrianople  and  Constantinople  itself,  and  thence 
turned  back  on  Illyria,  the  Sarmatians  and  the  Quadi 
again  crossed  the  Danube  and  the  Alamanni  prepared 
to  repeat  the  attempt  they  had  made  several  years 
before.  It  was  a  terrible  moment.  "The  earth," 
exclaimed  S.  Gregory  Nazianzene,  "is  covered  with 
blood  and  corpses,"  and  in  398  S.  Jerome  shuddered 
at  the  recollection  of  those  days.  "For  twenty  years 
and  more,  Roman  blood  is  shed  every  day  from  Con- 
stantinople to  the  Julian  Alps.  Scythia,  Thrace, 
Macedonia,  Thessaly,  Dardania,  Dacia,  Epirus,  Dal- 
matia,  the  two  Pannonias, — all  are  devastated  by 
Goths,  Sarmatians,  Quadi,  Alani,  Huns,  Vandals, 
Marcomanni.  Everywhere  there  is  pillaging  and 
murder.  .  .  .  The  Barbarians  lord  it  over  Athen- 
ians, Corinthians,  Lacedaemonians,  Arcadians — over 
all  Greece  in  fact.  .  .  .  How  many  rivers  are 
reddened  with  human  blood!  Antioch  and  all  the 
other  cities  washed  by  the  Halys,  the  Cydnus,  the 
Orontes,  the  Euphrates,  suffer  the  hon-ors  of  a  siege. 


The  Great  Catholic  Reaction  457 

Prisoners  are  driven  off  in  flocks.  Arabia,  Phoenicia, 
Palestine,  and  Egypt  are  a  prey  to  panic.  " ' 

In  this  terrible  situation  Gratian  was  happily  in- 
spired. He  charged  Theodosius,  son  of  the  valorous 
defender  of  Britain  and  Africa,  with  the  task  of  saving 
the  East,  and  Theodosius,  then  a  young  man  of  thirty- 
three,  proved  equal  to  this  difficult  undertaking.  He 
hastily  reconstructed  the  army,  risked  no  great  battle, 
but  by  a  series  of  small  and  successful  operations  he 
began  to  defeat  one  by  one  and  to  exterminate  the 
scattered  bands  of  Goths  which  infested  the  Balkan 
Peninsula.  The  first  result  of  this  was  that  on  Jan- 
uary 19,  379,  Gratian  raised  his  general  to  the  empire, 
thereby  inaugurating  a  new  dynasty.  But  this  pro- 
tracted and  difficult  guerilla  warfare  ended  as  was  now 
usual  in  the  struggles  between  Rome  and  the  barba- 
rians. Part  of  the  Gothic  horde  was  installed  in  the 
upper  part  of  Dacia  Ripensis,  in  Pannonia,  in  Thrace, 
Macedonia,  and  Moesia  as  "  allies,  "  that  is  to  say  under 
the  customary  obligation  of  performing  military  ser- 
vice in  defence  of  the  empire  (382). 

150.  The  Great  Catholic  Reaction  (380-383  A.D.). 
In  the  reign  of  Gratian,  Valentinian  II.,  and  Theodo- 
sius, the  East  was  governed  by  the  West.  All  three 
emperors  belonged  to  the  western  provinces  and  this 
meant  that  Orthodoxy  once  more  began  to  prevail  over 
Arianism,  the  Church  of  Rome  over  the  Churches  of 
the  East.  Gratian,  indeed,  was  a  fervent  Catholic  and 
a  keen  persecutor  of  the  Arians.  In  377  when  he 
invited  Theodosius  to  assume  the  purple,  he  had 
already  relieved  of  most  of  the  public  burdens  all  the 
priests  and  servants  of  the  Christian  religion.  ^  In  the 
following  year  he  had  expropriated  all  premises  used 

■  Hieron.,  Ep.,  60,  16.  '  Cod.  Theod.,  xvi.,  2,  24. 


458  The  Invasion  Resumed 

for  the  worship  of  non-Catholics,^  and  shortly  after- 
wards, immediately  on  the  death  of  Valens,  he  had 
dismissed  many  Arian  bishops,  replacing  them  by 
Catholics.  The  most  important  religious  measure  of 
this  time,  however,  was  not  passed  until  the  two 
Augusti  jointly  assumed  office.  On  August  3,  379, 
Gratian  and  Theodosius  issued  a  very  violent  edict  pro- 
hibiting all  heresies.  ^  Six  months  later,  on  February 
27, 380,  the  two  emperors  affirmed  in  another  edict  that 
it  was  their  will  and  pleasure  to  unify  the  faith  of  the 
empire,  which  was  to  be  that  of  the  Council  of  Nice 
and  officially  denominated  Catholic.  They  further  de- 
scribed the  other  forms  of  the  Christian  faith  as  not 
so  much  churches  as  "conventicles  of  madmen  and 
disordered  spirits, "  and  threatened  them  not  only 
with  the  vengeance  of  God  but  also  with  persecution 
by  the  government.^  This  threat  did  not  remain  a 
dead  letter,  for  on  January  10,  381,  the  Nicene  Creed 
was  imposed  on  the  whole  empire  as  the  basis  of 
the  one  permitted  religion  which  was  the  Catholic 
faith.  4 

Laws,  however,  were  not  enough;  they  had  to  be 
enforced  by  the  spiritual  authority.  In  May,  381, 
therefore,  Theodosius  convened  an  oecumenical  coun- 
cil at  Constantinople  at  which  the  Nicene  Creed  was 
solemnly  reconsecrated.  The  see  of  Rome  received 
the  first  place  among  the  great  episcopal  sees  of  the 
empire;  the  see  of  Constantinople,  raised  to  the  rank 
of  a  Patriarchate,  came  second,  being  placed  above 
those  of  Alexandria  and  Antioch  though  the  latter 

'  Cod.  Theod.,  xvi.,  5,  4.  On  the  date  see  the  commentary  of 
Gotefredo.  ^  Ibid.,  xvi.,  5,  5. 

3  Sozom.,  Hist.  Eccl.,  vii.,  4;  Cod.  Theod.,  xv:.,  i,  2. 
*  Cod.  Theod.,  xvi.,  5,  6. 


The  Aria?i  Revival  in  the  West       459 

claimed  to  have  been  founded  by  the  Apostles.  In  the 
same  year  Ambrose  Bishop  of  Milan  and  Gratian 
convoked  another  council  at  Aquileia.  This  council 
which  marked  a  new  triumph  of  Catholicism  laid  it 
down  for  the  first  time  that  it  was  the  duty  of  the 
catholic  clergy  to  pray  daily  for  the  emperors. 

These  two  councils  must  have  given  a  new  impulse 
to  the  anti-pagan  policy  of  the  emperors.  Towards 
the  end  of  381  Theodosius  and  Gratian  threatened  with 
severe  penalties  all  who  continued  to  perform  acts  of 
pagan  worship.*  In  382  they  ordered  the  removal 
from  the  Curia  Romana  of  the  altar  of  Victory  which 
had  been  placed  there  by  Augustus  after  the  Battle  of 
Actium  as  a  symbol  of  the  power  of  Rome,  which  had 
been  removed  by  Constantius  and  which  Julian  had 
replaced.  It  was  decreed  that  all  the  privileges  ac- 
corded to  the  pagan  priesthood  should  be  annulled, 
the  revenues  hitherto  appropriated  to  the  temples 
were  suppressed,  the  property  they  owned  was  con- 
fiscated, and  legacies  in  their  favour  were  forbidden. 
Finally,  in  this  same  year  or  in  the  next  Gratian  and 
consequently  also  Theodosius,  the  first  among  the 
emperors  laid  down  the  ancient  office  of  pontifex 
maximus.  The  exclusive  spirit  of  Christianity  was 
gradually  becoming  more  manifest  and  was  driving  the 
State  to  extirpate  all  other  cults. 

In  August,  383,  however,  Gaul  was  suddenly  invaded 
by  a  new  pretender,  Magnus  Clemens  Maximus,  a 
Spaniard  like  Theodosius,  who  seems  to  have  been 
governor  of  Britain.  Gratian,  who  had  never  been 
popular,  was  abandoned  by  his  troops  and  his  generals, 
and  was  assassinated  on  August  26th. 

151.     The  Arian    Revival  in  the  West  (383-387 

■  Cod.  Theod.,  xvi.,  lo,  7. 


460  The  hivasion  Resumed 

A.D.).  Maximus  had  declared  his  intention  of  over- 
turning Gratian  only,  as  he  was  the  more  unpopular 
of  the  two  Augusti  and  in  fact  he  made  peaceful  over- 
tures through  St.  Ambrose  to  Gratian's  brother  Val- 
entinian  II.,  promising  not  to  cross  the  Alps.  He  also 
intimated  to  Theodosius  that  he  merely  meant  to  rule 
the  provinces  which  had  belonged  to  Gratian,  that  is 
to  say  Gaul,  Spain,  and  Britain.  Theodosius  made 
no  objection  and  recognized  Maximus  as  Augustus, 
either  because  he  did  not  think  it  opportune  to  em- 
bark on  a  new  civil  war  or  because  he  hoped  to  make 
Maximus  his  tool.  '  Valentinian  was  still  very  young 
and  his  mother  Justina,  the  second  wife  of  Valentinian 
I.,  who  was  opposed  to  the  uncompromising  Catholi- 
cism of  Gratian  and  Theodosius,  governed  on  his  be- 
half. It  may  be,  therefore,  that  Theodosius  hoped  by 
means  of  Maximus  to  neutralize  the  influence  of  Justina. 
If  that  was  his  calculation  Maximus  fulfilled  it  even 
more  completely  than  had  been  desired.  Both  Pagans 
and  Arians  were  trying  to  profit  by  the  death  of  Gra- 
tian, and  Justina,  who  was  a  tolerant  spirit,  decided  to 
do  the  Arians  a  favour  by  persuading  S.  Ambrose  the 
Bishop  of  Milan  to  allow  the  Arians,  who  after  all  were 
citizens  and  soldiers  like  the  rest,  to  have  the  Basilica 
Porcia  outside  the  city  (S.  Vittore  ad  Corpus)  for  the 
exercise  of  their  religion.  This  act  of  toleration  was 
intended  to  conciliate  the  minority,  but  the  Orthodox 
party  rebelled  and  S.  Ambrose  found  himself  in  a  posi- 
tion to  threaten  and  even  practically  to  cause  a  revolt 
in  Milan  (Easter,  385).^  The  imperial  authority  was 
compelled  for  the  moment  to  give  way  to  this  agitation 
but  sought  for  an  occasion  to  reassert  itself,  and  in  the 
following  year  Valentinian  II.  authorized  the  Arians 
'  C/.  Ambrose,  Epp.,  20,  an  extremely  important  letter. 


First  Conflict  between  Church  and  State     461 

to  practise  their  religion  (January  25,  386).'  Maxi- 
mus  now  thought  the  moment  had  come  when  he 
could  repeat  against  Valentinian  the  manoeuvre 
which  had  succeeded  against  Gratian.  Owing  to  their 
common  zeal  for  the  Catholic  cause  he  was  sure  of 
Theodosius,  and  for  the  same  reason  of  Italy  where 
the  great  majority  was  Catholic.  Accordingly  in  387 
he  suddenly  appeared  in  the  plain  of  the  Po  as  the 
champion  of  Orthodoxy  against  the  Arian  tendencies 
of  Valentinian.  The  emperor  with  his  mother  and 
sister  had  barely  time  to  embark  and  take  flight  to  the 
East.  Once  more  theological  controversies  had  been 
made  the  tool  of  ambition. 

152.  The  First  Conflict  between  Church  and  State 
(387-390  A.D.).  But  Maximus  had  gone  too  far. 
Theodosius  could  not  allow  two  emperors  to  be 
murdered  before  his  eyes ;  still  less  could  he  permit  the 
occidental  Augustus  to  obtain  such  a  great  accession 
of  power.  In  the  face  of  a  political  danger  religious 
considerations  had  to  take  the  second  place.  The 
beauty  of  Valentinian's  sister  Galla  finally  turned  the 
scale.  The  Catholic  emperor,  who  had  recently  be- 
come a  widower,  was  captivated  and  determined  to 
make  Galla  his  wife.  Shortly  afterwards  Justina  died, 
and  when  his  mother  was  gone,  Valentinian  lost  no 
time  in  being  converted  to  Catholicism.  The  Western 
enterprise  ceased,  therefore,  to  be  a  danger  and  Theo- 
dosius, at  the  head  of  an  army  composed  of  Goths, 
Alani,  and  Huns,  in  which  were  serving  among  the 
chief  generals  the  Franks  Ricimer  and  Arbogastes, 
turned  against  Maximus.  Beaten  at  Siscia  (Siseck) 
in  the  valley  of  the  Sava  and  again  shortly  afterwards 

'■  Sozom.,  Hist.  Eccl.,  vii.,  13;  Cod.  Theod.,  xvi.,  i,  4;  Ambrose, 
Epp.,  xxi.,  13  ff. 


462  The  Invasion  Resumed 

at  Petovium  (Petau)  in  Pannonia,  Maximus  failed  to 
defend,  as  he  had  hoped,  the  passes  of  the  Julian  Alps, 
was  handed  over  by  his  own  soldiers  to  the  victor  who 
had  already  reached  the  gates  of  Aquileia  and  was 
finally  beheaded  (summer,  388).  Valentinian  was 
therefore  re-established  in  the  plenitude  of  his  powers. 

The  victory  of  Theodosius  meant  the  triumph  of 
Catholicism,  a  triumph  so  complete  that  it  freed  the 
Church  from  the  pupillage  hitherto  imposed  on  it  by 
the  empire.  In  these  years  the  great  Archbishop  of 
Milan  openly  formulated  the  doctrine,  which  had 
horrified  Julian,  that  the  State  was  subordinate  to  the 
Church,  because  the  only  object  of  an  earthl}^  society 
must  be  the  eternal  welfare  of  its  members.  The 
Archbishop  therefore  claimed  an  ever  greater  share  of 
influence  in  the  Consistorium  and  in  the  control  of 
public  affairs.  The  first  conflict  arose  over  the  de- 
struction of  a  synagogue  in  a  little  Asiatic  town  Callin- 
icum  on  the  Euphrates  at  the  instigation  of  the  local 
bishop.  As  no  law  forbade  the  exercise  of  the  Jewish 
religion,  Theodosius  had  decided  that  the  synagogue 
should  be  restored  at  the  expense  of  the  bishop  and 
that  the  incendiaries  should  be  punished.  St.  Am- 
brose opposed  this.'  The  emperor  refused  to  yield 
and  Ambrose  suspended  him  from  the  enjoyment  of 
religious  ministrations. 

Theodosius  gave  way,  but  worse  followed.  In  390 
a  great  revolt  broke  out  at  Thessalonica  in  which  per- 
ished the  governor,  several  magistrates,  and  some  of 
the  officers  of  the  garrison.  Theodosius  was  very 
angry  and  by  way  of  reprisal  ordered  a  massacre  in 
the  circus  in  which  innocent  and  guilty  were  alike 
slain  in  great  numbers.     Then  for  the  first  time  the 

■  Ambr.,  Epp.,  xl.-xli. 


The  New  Civil  War  463 

voice  of  a  bishop — Ambrose  again — was  raised  re- 
proaching the  emperor  with  his  cruelty  and  Theodosius 
was  punished  by  being  forbidden  access  to  the  Church. 
The  emperor  had  to  yield  a  second  time  and,  as  the 
victims  at  Thessalonica  could  not  be  brought  to  life 
again,  he  expiated  his  guilt  by  abstaining  from  all  the 
ceremonies  of  the  Church  until  his  next  birthday. 
The  logical  consequences  of  this  inexorably  followed; 
the  empire  was  weakened  and  the  new  religion  went  on 
with  greater  boldness  than  ever  to  seize  the  government 
of  the  world. 

153.  The  New  Civil  War  (391-395  A.D.).  Such 
a  surrender  of  the  imperial  authority  could  not  fail 
to  provoke  a  reaction  in  the  pagan  world.  The  first 
manifestations  of  this  were  in  the  East,  and  especially 
at  Alexandria  in  Egypt,  where,  in  391,  there  were  regu- 
lar battles  in  the  streets  between  Pagans  and  Chris- 
tians. From  Egypt  the  agitation  soon  spread  to  Italy 
where  the  pagan  party  were  still  very  numerous.  The 
Romanized  Frank  Arbogastes,  a  general  whom  Theo- 
dosius had  brought  with  him  from  the  East  in  the  war 
with  Maximus  and  who  had  afterwards  driven  a  Frank 
invasion  back  beyond  the  Rhine  by  a  lightning  counter- 
offensive,  picked  a  quarrel  with  Valentinian  II.,  and 
caused  him  to  be  assassinated  (May  15,  392).  In  Val- 
entinian's  place  as  Augustus  he  put  a  Roman  noble 
named  Eugenius,  a  man  of  great  importance  who  had 
been  elevated  to  one  of  the  highest  offices  in  the 
imperial  chancellery.  Recognized  by  Italy  and  the 
West  and  supported  by  Arbogastes,  Eugenius  com- 
menced a  regular  restoration  of  paganism.  The  sub- 
sidies were  restored  to  the  temples.  The  altar  of 
Victory  was  replaced  in  the  Curia.  The  image  of 
Hercules  was  substituted  for  the  Cross  on  the  banners 


464  The  Invasion  Resumed 

of  the  army.  A  suspension  of  public  business  {iusti- 
tium)  for  three  months  was  ordained  in  order  that  the 
religious  purification  of  the  towns  might  be  carried 
out  and  all  the  feasts  inscribed  in  the  pagan  calendar 
were  solemnly  celebrated. 

This  was  an  open  defiance  which  Theodosius  could 
not  overlook  and  he,  therefore,  set  out  from  the  East 
in  394  at  the  head  of  an  army  full  of  Goths,  Alani, 
Huns,  Iberians,  and  Saracens.  A  decisive  battle  was 
fought  on  September  5th  beyond  the  Julian  Alps  on 
the  banks  of  the  Frigidiis  (the  modern  Vipacco,  east  of 
Gorizia).  The  first  day's  fighting  was  doubtful,  but 
diiring  the  following  night  gold  achieved  what  steel 
had  failed  to  accomplish  and  part  of  the  army  of 
Arbogastes  was  induced  to  desert.  The  second  day 
(September  6th)  ended  in  victory  for  Theodosius.  Ar- 
.  bogastes  killed  himself  and  Eugenius  was  beheaded. 
Immediately  afterwards  pagan  worship  was  again 
forbidden;  the  temples  were  once  more  closed  or  de- 
stroyed and,  as  in  the  former  persecutions,  many  mas- 
terpieces of  ancient  art  perished. 

154.  The  Internal  Crisis  in  the  Empire  at  the  End 
of  the  Fourth  Century.  Five  months  later  Theodosius 
died  at  Milan,  being  then  only  fifty  years  of  age 
(January  17,  395).  Following  Diocletian  and  Con- 
stantine  he  was  the  last  of  the  three  great  emperors 
who  strove  to  reorganize  the  empire  after  the  terrible 
crisis  of  the  third  century.  Less  than  Constantine,  as 
Constantine  had  been  less  than  Diocletian  he  did 
what  he  could  to  cure  the  evils  of  the  times,  but, 
though  his  effort  was  great,  its  results  were  small. 
The  ancient  world  was  dying  of  the  wounds  received 
during  the  upheaval  which  followed  the  death  of 
Alexander  Severus,  and  no  human  power  could  restore 


Internal  Crisis  i^i  the  Empire        465 

it  to  health.  Perpetual  civil  and  foreign  war,  fre- 
quent invasion,  growing  taxation,  the  relentless  exac- 
tions of  the  State  now  preyed  too  freely  on  what  we 
call  "acquired  riches"  or  fortunes  already  consoli- 
dated. The  reforms  of  Diocletian,  especially  those 
measures  whereby  the  curiales,  members  of  the  curia, 
or  little  municipal  senates  by  which  the  towns  were 
governed,  were  made  responsible  to  the  State  for  the 
payment  of  the  contribution  of  the  whole  district,  had 
been  a  disaster  for  the  middle  class.  As  always  hap- 
pens in  troublous  times  property  had  become  ex- 
tremely mobile  and  passed  easily  from  one  hand  to 
another.  The  rich  became  rapidly  impoverished  and 
the  poor  as  rapidly  enriched.  But  this  fluidity  of 
fortune  soon  destroyed  all  that  had  survived  the  dis- 
asters of  the  third  century  of  the  brilliant  municipal 
civilization  which  had  been  the  glory  of  the  empire 
at  the  stimmit  of  its  power.  That  civilization,  as  we 
have  seen,  rested  on  a  great  number  of  solidly  based 
fortunes.  If  we  remember  that  in  addition  to  this 
cause  of  disintegration,  there  was  the  great  revolution 
in  ideas  and  sentiments  produced  by  Christianity,  the 
confusion  of  races,  the  accession  to  power  of  the  ruder 
populations  of  the  empire,  and  the  increasing  influx 
of  barbarians  who  established  themselves  in  Roman 
territory,  we  shall  easily  understand  how  it  was  that 
the  great  work  of  the  Antonines  was  now  everywhere 
falling  into  ruin.  Many  cities  were  depopulated,  their 
monuments  decaying.  The  arts  and  the  artists  that 
had  embellished,  enriched,  and  delighted  them  were 
disappearing,  the  curia  were  deserted  and  public  ser- 
vices disorganized. ' 

'  Ancient  writers  afiford  manj'-  testimonies  of  this  fact.     It  will 
be  enough  to  quote  an  official  document,  an  imperial  rescript  of 
VOL.  n — 30 


466  The  Invasion  Resumed 

The  wisest  course  perhaps  would  have  been  to  bow 
to  fate  and  to  return  to  a  simpler  form  of  life.  Chris- 
tianity might  have  helped  the  empire  to  make  this 
change.  But  the  imperial  authority  had  had  too  large 
a  share  in  creating  this  urban  civilization,  had  derived 
too  much  power  and  prestige  from  its  splendours;  too 
many  political,  economic,  and  intellectual  interests 
pressed  for  the  continuance  of  its  brilliant  and  secular 
tradition,  and  the  empire  did  what  it  could  to  arrest 
this  decadence.  The  methods  adopted  were  two  in 
number  and  both  equally  dangerous — the  grant  of 
special  privileges  and  coercion.  Soldiers  and  veterans 
on  the  one  hand  and  on  the  other  artists  whose  work 
was  necessary  for  the  embellishment,  the  convenience, 
and  the  pleasures  of  the  city,  for  instance,  architects, 
sculptors,  and  painters,  were  given  numerous  privileges 
of  all  kinds,  among  others  exemption  from  man}'  public 
burdens.'  The  grant  of  these  privileges,  however, 
meant  that  so  much  was  added  to  the  burden  which 
pressed  so  heavily  on  the  rest.  Life  became  ver}'' 
hard  for  many  classes  of  the  communit3^  oppressed 
as  they  were  by  taxation  and  by  the  obligation  to  be  at 
the  charge  of  numerous  public  expenses.  Great  there- 
fore must  have  been  the  temptation  to  enter  the  privi- 
leged professions  and,  for  the  more  desperate,  to  live 
on  the  charity  of  the  State  or  the  still  larger  charity 
of  the  Church,  or,  finally  to  escape  the  infinite  an- 
noyances of  civil  life  by  entering  the  Christian  priest- 

the  year  400:  destitutce  ministeriis  civitates  splendorem  quo  quidem 
nituerant  amiserunt.  Plurimi  siquidem  collegiati  cuUum  urbium 
deferentes  agrestem  vitam  secuti  in  secreta  sese  et  devia  contulerunt: 
Cod.  Theod.,  xii.,  19,  i. 

'  Cf.  Cod.  Theod.,  xiii.,  4,  2,  where  is  given  a  very  interesting 
list  of  the  privileged  artists;  it  includes  all  the  luxury  trades. 


Internal  Crisis  in  the  Empire        467 

hood.  Monasticism,  which  developed  greatly  at  this 
time,  was  another  refuge  for  the  destitute. 

In  order  to  remedy  this  evil  and  to  prevent  a 
situation  arising  in  which  there  should  be  a  super- 
abundance, say,  of  sculptors  and  painters  but  a  de- 
ficiency of  citizens  and  of  bakers,  the  imperial  gov- 
ernment, after  the  reign  of  Diocletian  in  the  course  of 
the  fourth  centiiry,  adopted  a  resolute  policy  of  com- 
pulsory organization.  Several  kinds  of  social  condi- 
tion and  not  a  few  forms  of  labour  became  hereditary 
and  obligatory.  Thus  membership  of  the  curicB 
became  compulsory  on  all  who  possessed  a  certain 
amount  of  property  in  land  and  the  obligation  de- 
scended to  their  posterity  until  all  were  ruined.  No 
curolis  could  occupy  any  other  official  position;  for 
example  he  was  forbidden  to  enter  the  army.  Many 
of  the  humbler  occupations  which  were  necessary  for 
the  pleasure  or  comfort  of  the  city  life  were  organized 
in  compulsory  associations.  No  man  who  became  a 
member  of  such  an  association  could  leave  it,  and  his 
sons  were  likewise  compelled  to  join.  In  the  coxirse  of 
the  fourth  century  the  same  method  was  gradually 
applied  to  the  coloni,  who  had  hitherto  been  free 
peasants  cultivating  the  lands  of  their  master  in  ac- 
cordance with  a  definite  agreement,  but  who  now  be- 
came serfs  of  the  soil,  chained  for  generation  after 
generation  to  the  ground  which  they  tilled.  In  the 
Codex  Justinianus  there  has  been  preserv^ed  the  de- 
cree introducing  this  form  of  servitude  into  Palestine,^ 
which  enables  us  to  see  how  the  plan  worked  in  an 
actual  instance.  In  places  where  there  were  too  few 
peasants,  owing  to  the  attractions  of  le^s  laborious  or 
more  profitable  occupations,  the  proprietors  appealed 

'  Cod.  Just.,  xi.,  50,  I. 


468  The  Invasion  Resumed 

to  the  State,  and  the  emperor  issued  a  decree  impos- 
ing hereditary  compulsion  on  the  country  people  of 
the  district  to  cultivate  the  land  there  in  the  same 
way  as  the  work  of  the  pistores  or  bakers  had  been 
made  compulsory  at  Rome. 

It  is  easy  to  see  what  were  the  difficulties  of  such  a 
system.  It  would  only  be  carried  on  by  means  of  a 
multiplicity  of  laws,  and  obedience  could  be  secured 
only  by  great  expenditure,  much  cruelty,  and  the 
services  of  an  ever  increasing  bureaucracy.  Discon- 
tent, resentment,  and  a  spirit  of  revolt  grew  with  the 
number  of  the  victims.  The  natural  reaction  followed 
intensifying  the  cause  of  the  evil  which  these  meas- 
ures were  meant  to  cure  by  necessitating  new  ex- 
penditure and  new  taxes.  Further  the  whole  social 
organization  of  the  empire  acquired  a  rigidity  which 
made  it  weaker  and  less  capable  of  sustaining  blows 
from  outside.  When  so  many  persons  were  compelled, 
from  father  to  son,  to  carry  on  the  same  trade  a  large 
proportion  of  them  were  condemned  to  pursuits  for 
which  they  had  no  aptitude.  It  is  probable,  for  ex- 
ample, that  the  prevention  of  the  curiales  entering  the 
army  was  one  of  the  causes  of  the  increasing  scarcity 
of  officers  owing  to  which  the  empire  was  more  and 
more  compelled  to  resort  to  the  services  of  barbarians 
in  the  higher  ranks  and  no  longer  merely  as  common 
soldiers.  This  was  one  of  the  most  dangerous  develop- 
ments in  the  fourth  century.  The  curiales  in  fact 
were  the  opulent  middle  class  of  the  empire  which 
could  and  should  have  been  a  recruiting  ground  for 
officers.  Thus  the  internal  crisis,  aggravated  by  the 
very  efforts  which  were  made  to  deal  with  it,  was 
destined  to  be  one  of  the  chief  causes  of  the  final 
catastrophe  which  must  now  be  related. 


CHAPTER    XIX 

THE   CATASTROPHE    (395-476  A.D.) 

155.  The  First  Conflict  between  the  East  and  the 
West  (395-397  A.D.).  Theodosius  on  his  death-bed 
divided  the  empire  between  his  two  sons  Honorius  and 
Arcadius.  The  territory  in  which  the  two  portions 
adjoined  each  other  was  Illyricum,  of  which  Dalmatia, 
Pannonia,  and  Noricum  fell  to  the  West  while  Dacia 
and  Macedonia  were  assigned  to  the  East.  This  time, 
as  in  the  days  of  the  tetrarchy,  it  was  only  the  ad- 
ministration which  was  divided;  the  empire  as  before 
remained  one  and  indivisible  with  a  common  system 
of  law.  The  force  of  circumstances,  however,  was  des- 
tined to  prevail  over  human  dispositions,  and  from  the 
death  of  Theodosius  began  the  final  division  of  the 
ancient  Roman  Empire  into  two  parts,  Eastern  and 
Western. 

The  two  princes  were  both  very  young  men.  Theo- 
dosius therefore  when  he  was  dying  had  entrusted 
Arcadius,  a  boy  of  eighteen,  to  the  care  of  Rufinus  the 
prsetorian  prefect.  His  other  son  Honorius  was  only 
eleven  and  was  put  under  the  guardianship  of  Stilicho 
the  magister  militum  or  commander-in-chief  of  the 
armies  of  the  East.  Stilicho  was  a  Vandal  and  a  bar- 
barian, but,  like  Arbogastes.  was  much  more  Roman  in 
spirit  and  tendency  than  many  of  his  contemporaries 

469 


470  The  Catastrophe 

who  were  natives  of  Italy  and  Rome.  Rufinus  and 
Stilicho  soon  disagreed,  and  this  came  about  the  more 
easily  as,  since  the  foundation  of  Constantinople,  the 
rivalry  between  the  East  and  the  West  had  been 
rekindled.  Italy  would  not  acknowledge  that  the  new 
capital  was  the  equal  or  the  superior  of  Rome. 
Throughout  the  East,  on  the  other  hand,  there  was  a 
growing  tendency  to  regard  Constantinople  as  a  city 
which  had  eclipsed  and  supplanted  Rome  or  which,  at 
the  very  least,  must  not  be  considered  as  in  any  way 
subordinate  to  the  ancient  metropolis.  This  discord 
flared  up  into  a  rebellion  of  the  Goths  stationed  in  the 
East,  the  reason  or  the  pretext  being  that  Rufinus  had 
failed  to  recognize  some  of  their  privileges.  Having 
acclaimed  Alaric  as  their  sovereign  they  fell  upon 
Thrace  which  they  laid  waste,  and  then  invaded 
Greece  (395).  Stilicho  immediately  hastened  to  the 
scene  of  action  with  his  army  and  reached  Thessalon- 
ica,  where,  however,  he  was  met  by  a  message  from 
Arcadius  requiring  him  to  dismiss  the  oriental  troops 
which  had  been  under  his  command  since  the  time  of 
the  war  of  Theodosius  against  Arbogastes,  to  retire 
with  his  own  and  to  take  care  not  again  to  cross  the 
frontiers  of  the  Eastern  Empire. 

For  the  first  time  Constantinople  explicitly  affirmed 
that  her  sovereign  rights  were  equal  to  those  of  Rome, 
and  she  did  so  in  the  face  of  the  enemy  and  at  the  risk 
of  precipitating  a  disaster.  If  Stilicho  obeyed,  the 
Roman  Empire  would  be  broken  into  two  empires, 
independent  of  each  other  because  possessed  of  equal 
rights.  If  he  did  not  obey  it  meant  civil  war  between 
the  two  parts  of  the  empire.  Stilicho,  being  a  prudent 
and  crafty  person,  devised  a  complicated  expedient 
for  avoiding  this  tragic  dilemma.     He  pretended  to 


First  Conflict  between  the  East  and  West  471 

>'ield,  but  placed  at  the  head  of  the  troops  which  were 
to  be  led  back  to  the  East  a  Goth  named  Gainas,  an 
officer  who  was  in  his  confidence.  Gainas  succeeded 
so  well  in  exciting  the  anger  of  the  soldiers  against 
Rufinus  and  the  separatist  aims  of  the  court  of  Con- 
stantinople that  when  they  arrived  at  that  capital 
they  murdered  Rufinus  (November  27,  395),^  an  event 
which  must  have  opened  the  eyes  of  the  court  to  the 
dangers  of  a  policy  of  separation. 

This  at  first  seemed  to  be  the  case  and  wiser  counsels 
prevailed  at  Constantinople.  Stilicho  was  allowed  to 
lead  his  forces  from  Dalmatia  into  Southern  Greece, 
where  he  barred  the  isthmus  of  Corinth  and  began  the 
pursuit  of  Alaric's  army  through  the  hills  and  valleys 
of  the  Peloponnese.  But  no  sooner  had  the  Eastern 
Empire  obtained  a  breathing  space  than  the  policy 
hostile  to  the  West  and  to  Stilicho  got  the  upper  hand 
once  more,  encouraged  by  the  eunuch  Eutropius  who 
had  succeeded  Rufinus  in  the  favour  of  the  emperor. 
Profiting  by  the  difficulties  which  prevented  Stilicho 
from  entirely  annihilating  the  Goths,  ^  his  enemies  suc- 
ceeded in  having  him  declared  a  public  enemy  of  the 
Eastern  Empire,  in  confiscating  his  property,  and  in 
concluding  a  treaty  of  peace  with  Alaric  whereby 
Epirus  and  the  eastern  coast  of  Illyricum  as  far  as 
Dyrrhachium  (Durazzo)  were  ceded  to  the  Gothic 
King  who  was  appointed  dux  of  the  district  (397). 

This  time  Stilicho,  who  was  unwilling  or  unable  to 
embark  on  a  civil  war,  resigned  himself  to  retiring  into 

'  Cf.  Claudian  in  Ruf.,  ii.,  400  ff. 

'  The  causes  of  the  failure  of  StiUcho's  campaign  are  very  ob- 
scure. His  friends  blame  the  Eastern  Court  (Claud.,  De  bello 
Goth,  516-517),  his  enemies  blame  Stilicho  himself.  It  is  wiser 
to  remember  the  military  difficulties  by  which  he  was  confronted. 


472  The  Catastrophe 

the  occidental  provinces  to  which  he  restricted  his 
government.  Thus  the  rupture  between  the  East  and 
the  West  was  for  the  first  time  officially  declared,  and 
the  great  historic  achievement  of  Rome,  which  was  the 
union  of  the  oriental  and  the  occidental  empires,  was 
shattered. 

156.  The  New  Invasions  in  the  West  and  the  End 
of  Stilicho  (397-408  A.D.).  To  make  up  for  this 
Stilicho  devoted  himself  v/ith  renewed  energy  to  the 
government  of  the  diminished  empire.  The  years 
during  which  he  was  at  the  head  of  affairs  were,  con- 
sidering the  time,  by  no  means  a  period  of  bad  govern- 
ment. The  religious  severities  of  Theodosius  were 
mitigated.  Finance,  administration,  and  public  safety 
were  well  looked  after.  Africa  was  reconquered  for 
the  empire,  and  the  insurrection  of  its  governor  Gildo 
was  suppressed.  In  spite  of  Stilicho's  personal  pre- 
dilections, Christianity  was  ever  more  favoured  at  the 
expense  of  paganism ;  and  by  an  edict  dated  August  20, 
399,  the  abolition  of  the  pagan  festivals  was  decreed. 
But  all  these  efforts  were  of  no  avail  because  the  divi- 
sion of  the  empire  into  two  parts  had  irremediably 
weakened  the  military  power  of  the  West.  The  em- 
pire had  hitherto  been  able  to  resist  all  the  attacks  of 
which  it  had  been  the  object  because  the  legions  of  the 
East  had  hurried  to  the  West,  and  those  of  the  West 
to  the  East  whenever  the  necessity  arose.  When  the 
provinces  and  the  armies  were  separated,  the  West 
had  to  face  the  same  enemies  with  diminished  forces 
and  therefore  with  increasing  difficulty. 

The  danger  of  the  position  was  soon  apparent.  In 
400  Alaric,  encouraged  by  the  weakness  of  the  occi- 
dental empire  and  perhaps  also  by  the  secret  advice  of 
the  court  of  Constantinople,  invaded  Italy  at  the  head 


Invasions  in  the  West  and  End  of  Stilicho  473 

of  his  Gothic  army  reinforced  by  other  barbarian 
tribes,  and,  having  crossed  the  Alps,  was  able  to 
threaten  Milan  itself,  the  residence  of  Honorius  and  his 
court  (end  of  401).  It  was  a  terrible  moment  which 
threw  a  strong  light  on  the  defencelessness  of  the  West- 
ern Empire.  In  order  to  save  Italy,  Stilicho  was  com- 
pelled to  have  recotirse  to  the  disastrous  remedy  of 
recalling  troops  from  Britain,  from  the  Rhine,  and 
from  RhcBtia,  thus  abandoning  these  provinces  to  their 
fate.  Italy  was,  in  fact,  saved.  Having  raised  the 
siege  of  Milan,  Stilicho  pursued  the  enemy  as  far  as 
Pollentia  (Pollenzo)  on  the  Tanarus,  and  there  inflicted 
on  him  a  memorable  defeat  (April  6,  402)  and  a  second 
in  the  following  year  near  Verona  (summer  of  403). 
He  was  unable,  however,  to  destroy  Alaric's  army,  and 
the  Gothic  chieftain  succeeded  in  evacuating  the  Ve- 
netian plain  and  in  withdrawing  the  remnant  of  his 
forces. 

Hardly,  however,  was  the  Gothic  peril  at  an  end 
when  a  new  danger  threatened.  From  the  north  of 
Europe  a  new  and  enormous  horde  of  Germans  under 
a  pagan  Ostrogoth  named  Radagaisus  threw  itself 
upon  Italy.  The  invading  masses  were  so  great — it  is 
said  that  they  numbered  more  than  200,000  men' — 
that  it  was  impossible  to  offer  any  immediate  opposi- 
tion (405).  Honorius  and  his  court  repaired  to  Ra- 
venna which  possessed  magnificent  natural  defences, 
while  the  enemy  penetrated  as  far  as  Etruria.  Stilicho 
once  more  took  steps  to  reinforce  the  diminished  army 
of  Italy  which  had  been  severely  tried  by  the  Gothic 

'  C/.  Aug.,  De  civitate  Dei,  v.,  23;  Oros.,  vii.,  37,  4;  Zosim.,  v., 
26.  On  the  two  invasions  of  Alaric  and  Radagaisus  cf.  the  va^ 
uable  study  of  F.  Gabotto,  Storia  dell' Italia  occidentate  (395-l3i3)» 
Pincrolo,  191 1,  vol.  i.,  pp.  82  ff.,  II2  ff. 


474  ^^^  Catastrophe 

war,  by  stripping  the  provinces,  and  b}'  this  means  in 
the  course  of  405  was  enabled  to  defeat  and  practically 
exterminate  the  invaders  near  Fassulae  (Fiesole)  in  a 
battle  in  which  Radagaisus  himself  was  killed. 

But,  while  Stilicho  was  triimiphing  at  Pollentia,  at 
Verona,  and  at  Fcesulas,  Britain  was  becoming  the 
scene  of  new  usurpations,  insurrections,  and  barbarian 
invasions.  Gaul  stripped  of  Roman  troops  had  been 
invaded  and  laid  waste  by  a  combination  of  Vandals, 
Alani,  Suevi,  Franks,  and  Burgundians,  while  Alaric 
on  the  extreme  eastern  frontier  was  merely  waiting 
until  he  had  reorganized  his  army.  On  this  Stilicho 
had  recourse  to  the  desperate  expedient  of  suggesting 
to  Alaric  that  he  should  leave  the  service  of  the  court 
of  Constantinople  for  that  of  the  Court  of  Ravenna, 
and  should  be  made  prsefect  of  Illyricum  which  should 
have  the  frontiers  which  the  Western  Empire  claimed 
for  this  province  but  which  were  contested  by  the 
Empire  of  the  East.  Alaric  was  disposed  to  accept, 
but  required  the  consent  of  the  Court  of  Const&,ntin- 
ople  which  was  reluctant  and  protracted  the  negotia- 
tions. Irritated  by  the  delay  Stilicho  finally  decided 
to  take  reprisals  by  closing  Western  ports  to  ships  com- 
ing from  the  East.^  Meanwhile  a  usurper  named 
Flavius  Claudius  Constantinus  left  Britain  and  landed 
in  Gaul  whence  he  began  to  threaten  Italy.  Alaric, 
ill-pleased  with  the  delay  in  the  negotiations,  de- 
manded a  large  indemnity  for  the  expenses  of  his  arma- 
ments of  which  no  use  was  being  made.  Stilicho  had 
the  greatest  difficulty  in  dealing  with  all  these  troubles 
which  had  the  further  effect  of  encouraging  the  ever 
increasing  number  of  his  enemies  at  court.  His  toler- 
ant attitude  in  matters  of  religion,  his  inclination  to 

'  Cf.  Cod.  Theod.,  vii.,  16,  i. 


Alaric  475 

treat  with  the  barbarians,  and  his  policy  of  sacrific- 
ing the  provinces  for  the  sake  of  Italy  had  raised 
against  him  a  bitter  and  implacable  opposition,  and 
yet  he  was  blamed  for  the  division  of  the  empire.  On 
the  death  of  Arcadius  in  408,  his  son,  a  boy  of  seven, 
succeeded  him  as  Theodosius  II.,  and  it  seemed  as  if 
the  court  of  Ravenna  might  in  the  end  succeed  in  ac- 
quiring that  control  of  the  East  which  all  Stilicho's 
authority  had  hitherto  failed  to  secure.  But  fortune 
betrayed  the  great  general.  His  adversaries  forced 
the  situation  which,  they  saw,  might  turn  against  them 
at  any  moment.  While  Honorius  was  at  Pavia  a  vio- 
lent mutiny,  prepared  with  super-refined  cunning, 
broke  out  among  the  soldiers  stationed  there,  who  de- 
manded the  head  of  Stilicho  from  their  feeble  sovereign. 
Stilicho  might  have  resisted,  for  the  great  majority 
of  the  army  was  on  his  side,  but  he  did  not  wish  to 
provoke  a  civil  war  and  allowed  himself  to  be  slain  by 
the  emissaries  of  the  emperor  (August  23,  408). 

157.  Alaric  (408-410  A.D.).  The  consequences 
of  this  insane  crime  were  incalculable.  The  death  of 
Stilicho  was  the  signal  for  the  revolt  or  the  defection 
of  many  of  the  barbarians  allied  to  the  empire  who  for 
the  most  part  had  been  recruited  by  him  for  the  de- 
fence of  the  declining  Roman  world.  Worse  still  it 
brought  about  a  rupture  with  Alaric.  The  Court  of 
Ravenna  had  inevitably  assumed  an  attitude  towards 
the  Goth  which  was  the  opposite  of  that  of  Stilicho, 
and  replied  to  all  his  requests,  whether  just  or  unjust, 
by  a  curt  refusal.  The  consequence  was  that  in  the 
same  year  (408)  Alaric  suddenly  burst  into  Italy  from 
Illyricum.  This  time,  as  Italy  was  soon  to  discover, 
Stilicho  was  no  more.  While  Honorius  took  refuge  in 
Ravenna,  Alaric  took  and  sacked  Aquileia,  Altinum, 


476  The  Catastrophe 

Concordia,  and  Cremona.  He  left  Ravenna  on  his 
flank,  proceeded  along  the  coast  of  the  Adriatic  and 
marched  along  the  Via  Flaminia  on  Rome  without 
meeting  any  resistance.  Since  it  was  besieged  by  the 
Gauls,  Rome  had  never  seen  a  foreign  foe  beneath  her 
walls.  Surprised  by  this  attack  she  did  what  was 
possible  and  defended  herself  within  the  circle  of  the 
Aurelian  fortifications.  But  Alaric  blockaded  the 
city  and  by  threats  of  starvation  compelled  it  to  come 
to  terms.  He  demanded  and  received  a  considerable 
tribute  which  was  to  take  the  place  of  the  indemnity 
denied  to  him  by  the  official  government.  Further  he 
pledged  the  senate  to  support  at  court  a  treaty  of 
peace  under  which  Alaric  was  to  receive  Noricum  with 
the  title  of  magister  militum  of  the  empire.  These 
conditions  were  not  excessive,  but  the  court  of  Ra- 
venna, which  by  its  attitude  had  left  Italy  to  its  fate, 
refused  to  hear  to  anything  of  the  sort.  Alaric  re- 
turned to  Latium,  occupied  the  port  of  Ostia,  took 
possession  of  the  magazines  of  corn  from  which  Rome 
drew  its  provisions  and  threatened  to  starve  out  the 
city.  By  this  means  he  compelled  the  senate  to  depose 
Honorius  and  to  substitute  for  him  a  certain  Attalus, 
the  prasfect  of  the  city,  who  immediately  after  his 
appointment  not  only  declared  himself  prepared  to 
satisfy  Alaric's  demands  but  opened  hostilities  against 
Honorius  by  sending  an  expedition  against  Africa. 
This  enterprise  was  a  failure,  whereupon  Alaric  de- 
posed Attalus  and,  having  carried  him  to  his  camp  as 
a  hostage  together  with  Galla  Placidia,  the  beautiful 
daughter  of  Theodosius  I.,  he  decided  to  negotiate. 

The  imperial  court  was  again  immovable,  where- 
upon Alaric  lost  patience.  In  the  night  of  August 
24,  410,  he  stormed  the  Aurelian  Wall  by  a  surprise 


The  Final  Loss  oj  Western  Europe    477 

attack  and  entered  the  eternal  city,  which  he  had 
hitherto  respected,  which  Hannibal  himself  had  never 
dared  to  attack,  but  which  was  now  given  up  to  the 
spoiler  for  three  days.  Alaric,  however,  was  not  lack- 
ing in  astuteness.  His  intention  was  not  to  conquer 
Italy  where,  in  the  very  heart  of  the  empire,  he  was, 
to  use  a  military  term,  "in  the  air"  and  exposed  to 
converging  attacks  from  all  the  points  of  the  compass. 
He  wished  to  establish  himself,  with  or  without  the 
consent  of  the  empire,  in  a  corner  of  the  Roman  world 
where  he  could  live  in  peace.  Having  failed  to  secure 
that  consent  he  considered  where  he  could  establish 
himself  most  securely  by  force  with  the  means  at  his 
disposal  and  he  seems  to  have  cast  his  eye  on  Africa; 
not  without  reason,  for  Africa,  though  difficult  to 
attack,  was  situated  at  one  of  the  extremities  of  the 
empire,  and  was  easy  to  defend.  Moreover  an  in- 
vader could  reckon  on  being  assisted  by  its  atrocious 
internal  dissensions,  and  it  was  a  rich  country  and  the 
granary  of  Italy.  Thus,  if  he  got  possession  of  it,  he 
would  have  in  his  hands  a  powerful  means  of  compell- 
ing the  emperor  to  negotiate.  Alaric  therefore  did  not 
maltreat  Rome  too  savagely,  and  on  his  departure 
turned  towards  Southern  Italy  with  the  intention,  it 
appears,  of  conquering  Sicily  which  was  to  serve  as  a 
bridge  to  Africa,  as  it  had  done  for  Rome  in  the  days 
of  the  Punic  wars.  During  his  march,  however,  he 
died  suddenly  while  still  quite  a  young  man.  Sub- 
sequent legend  relates  that  his  Goths  buried  him  in  a 
golden  tomb  near  Consentia  (Cosenza)  under  the  bed 
of  the  river  Busento  which  was  diverted  for  the  piu"- 
pose  (410). 

158.     The  Final  Loss  of  Western  Europe  (410-416 
A.D.).     Alaric   was   succeeded    in   the   command   by 


478  The  Catastrophe 

his  relative  Ataulfus,  who  gave  up  the  idea  of  con- 
quering Sicily  and  Africa  and  once  more  opened  nego- 
tiations with  the  empire.  The  attitude  of  the  court 
had  in  the  meantime  altered,  chiefly  owing  to  the  very 
grave  events  which  had  taken  place  in  Southern  Gaul. 
There,  while  Honorius  was  struggling  with  Alaric  in 
Italy,  a  usurper  named  Constantine  was  confronted 
by  the  numerous  barbarian  tribes  which  had  pene- 
trated into  the  country  since  the  year  406.  Constan- 
tine had  decided  to  free  himself  of  their  presence  by 
directing  them  on  Spain,  and  in  fact  the  Vandals,  the 
Alani,  and  the  Suevi  went  on  in  409  to  the  Iberian 
peninsula  which  they  devastated  and  almost  com- 
pletely overran.  The  vSuevi  and  some  of  the  Vandals 
settled  themselves  in  Galicia,  the  Alani  in  Lusitania 
and  in  the  territories  of  Nova  Carthago,  while  another 
section  of  the  Vandals  occupied  Bagtica  which  they 
called  Vandalusia,  a  name  which  afterwards  was  al- 
tered to  Andalusia. 

This  gave  no  breathing  space  to  Gaul.  After  the 
barbarian  invasions  the  civil  wars  recommenced. 
Against  the  usurper  another  usurper  arose  in  the  per- 
son of  Jovinus.  In  411  Honorius  had  to  send  Con- 
stantius,  his  new  magister  militum  who  was  a  great 
general,  to  the  province  and  he  was  at  last  successful 
in  placing  Constantine  hors  de  combat.  Gaul,  however, 
might  be  considered  as  lost  unless  the  empire  made  a 
great  effort,  and  in  412  Honorius  oflered  Ataulfus  the 
opportunity  of  taking  his  Goths  thither  to  fight  for 
him.  Ataulfus  accepted  the  mission  and  his  arrival 
was  the  signal  for  new  intrigues  and  conflicts  between 
barbarians,  pretenders,  and  Roman  generals.  For  all 
that,  after  about  a  year  and  a  half  Jovinus  was  con- 
quered with  the  help  of  the  Goths  and  Southern  Gaul 


The  Final  Loss  of  Western  Europe   479 

was  reoccupied  as  far  as  Bordeaux.  This,  however, 
did  not  serve  to  clear  up  the  relations  of  Ataulfus  with 
Honorius.  The  emperor  hesitated,  as  he  had  done  in 
the  case  of  Alaric,  to  give  Ataulfus  the  territory  he 
wanted  within  the  boundaries  of  the  empire  and  to 
give  him  in  marriage  Placidia  who  was  still  a  hostage 
in  the  Gothic  camp.  In  the  end  Ataulfus,  again  like 
Alaric,  tried  to  force  the  em.peror's  hand.  About  the 
end  of  413  he  attacked  Massilia  without  success.  He 
then  took  Narbona  (Narbonne)  and  stormed  Tolosa 
(Toulouse).  At  Narbona  in  414  he  solemnized  his 
marriage  with  Placidia  and  again  invested  Attains 
with  the  purple  on  condition  of  receiving  from  him 
Aquitania.  Constantius  then  took  the  field  against 
Ataulfus  who  was  very  soon  compelled  to  retreat  into 
Spain  where  he  fell  by  the  treacherous  hand  of  a  bar- 
barian assassin  (415).  His  death  finally  settled  the 
Gothic  question  which  gave  no  further  trouble  for 
about  twenty  years.  The  chief  Vallia,  who  succeeded 
Ataulfus,  after  the  very  brief  reign  of  Sigericus,  suc- 
ceeded in  concluding  the  agreement  for  which  Alaric 
and  Ataulfus  had  striven  in  vain.  Galla  Placidia 
was  restored  to  Honorius  cind  Vallia  was  charged  with 
the  war  against  the  barbarians  in  Spain  and  was 
promised  Southern  Gaul  as  a  rev/ard  if  he  succeeded, 
on  the  understanding  that  he  was  to  hold  it  as  a  vassal 
state  of  the  empire. 

Vallia  completed  his  difficult  task  between  416  and 
418,  and  in  concert  with  Constantius  drove  back  the  bar- 
barians into  the  extreme  north-west  of  the  peninsula. 
In  the  latter  year  or  in  419  he  obtained  for  his  Goths 
and  for  himself  as  an  independent  prince  a  firm  estab- 
lishment in  Aquitania  and  in  several  cities  in  the  neigh- 
bouring provinces. 


480  The  Catastrophe 

Four  years  later,  on  the  15th  or,  according  to  certain 
authorities,  on  the  20th  of  August,  423,  the  Western 
Emperor  died  after  a  reign  of  about  thirty  years. 
Terrible  indeed  was  the  state  of  the  countries  which 
his  father  had  placed  under  his  control !  Britain  and 
North-western  Gaul  were  lost;  the  lands  on  the  left 
bank  of  the  Rhine  near  Magontiacum  (Mayence)  had 
been  ceded  to  the  Burgundians  in  the  very  year  in 
which  Ataulfus  had  been  fighting  in  Southern  Gaul. 
That  region  since  418  had  been  a  Visigothic  kingdom, 
while  Spain  was  in  the  hands  of  barbarian  tribes  pre- 
dominant among  whom  were  the  terrible  Vandals. 
The  occidental  empire,  which  had  been  the  great  work 
of  Rome,  was  half  destroyed  and  one  of  the  chief  causes 
of  this  disaster  had  been  the  partition  of  the  empire 
which  followed  the  death  of  Theodosius. 

159.  The  Vandals  (423-445  A.D.).  Honorius  left 
no  son,  but  had  a  nephew  Flavius  Placidus  Valen- 
tinianus,  son  of  his  sister  Placidia  who  on  her  libera- 
tion by  the  Goths  had  married  the  general  Constantius. 
Flavius  was  a  child  of  five  and  therefore  the  empire 
was  once  more  united  under  the  sceptre  of  the  Emperor 
of  the  East,  Theodosius  II.,  the  son  of  Arcadius,  who 
meanwhile  had  grown  to  man's  estate  and  had  gov- 
erned the  Eastern  Empire  in  comparative  tranquillity. 
In  the  East  the  greatest  difficulties  had  been  as  in  the 
past 'the  religious  struggles,  and,  in  the  year  422,  a 
Persian  war  which,  however,  ended  in  a  truce  destined 
to  govern  the  relations  of  the  two  monarchies  for 
nearly  eighty  years.  The  union  of  the  distracted  West 
with  the  tranquil  and  more  prosperous  East  promised 
to  bring  advantages  to  both  parts  of  the  empire. 
Theodosius  was  accordingly  proclaimed  Emperor  both 
of  the  East  and  of  the  West.     Suddenh',  hov/ever,  a 


The   Vandals  4<S  t 

pretender  arose  in  the  West  in  the  person  of  John  the 
primicerius  notariorum  or  chief  of  the  imperial  notaries, 
who  immediately  sent  his  general  Flavius  Aetius  to 
recruit  auxiliary  forces  among  the  Hims  for  the  civil 
war  which  was  imminent.  His  revolt  seems  to  have 
induced  Theodosius  to  give  up  the  idea  of  ruling  the 
whole  empire  by  himself,  for  he  hastened  to  proclaim 
as  Augustus  the  little  Valentinian  putting  him  under 
the  guardianship  of  his  mother  and  betrothing  him  to 
his  daughter  Eudoxia.  He  then  prepared  a  great 
army  and  opened  hostilities.  John  was  defeated  and 
slain,  for  Aetius  and  his  Huns  arrived  too  late.  The 
son  of  Placidia  was  invested  with  the  purple  with  the 
style  of  Valentinian  III.,  and  as  a  reward  for  his  inter- 
vention the  Eastern  Emperor  received  Illyricum,  thus 
occupying  all  the  eastern  approaches  to  Italy,  obtain- 
ing a  direct  outlet  to  the  Adriatic  and  settling  entirely 
in  his  own  favour  the  dispute  which  had  been  so  long 
and  so  bitterly  contested  with  Stilicho. 

The  reign  of  Valentinian  III.  began  with  a  disaster. 
The  two  principal  personages  in  the  Western  Empire 
were  Bonifacius  the  governor  of  Africa,  who  in  413 
had  conducted  the  defence  of  Massilia  against  Ataul- 
fus  and  who  had  not  recognized  the  usurpation  of  John, 
and  Aetius,  who  had  made  peace  with  the  new  govern- 
ment on  his  return  from  his  mission  to  the  Hims. 
Both  had  set  their  hearts  on  the  office  of  magister 
militum.  It  appears  that  Aetius  succeeded  in  persuad- 
ing the  regent  Placidia  that  Bonifacius  was  meditating 
an  insurrection,  by  suggesting  that  she  should  sum- 
mon him  to  Italy  to  test  his  loyalty,  at  the  same  time 
secretly  warning  Bonifacius  not  to  come  as  the  court 
was  plotting  against  him.  However  this  may  be  the 
regent  finally  dismissed  Bonifacius  who,  thinking  that 

VOL.    II — 31 


482  The  Catastrophe 

he  was  ruined,  had  recourse  to  the  desperate  remedy  of 
inviting  the  Vandals  to  come  from  Spain  to  Africa  and 
carry  out  the  design  of  Alaric. 

The  Vandals  had  seized  the  opportunity  afforded 
by  the  civil  war  which  broke  out  on  the  death  of  Hon- 
orius  to  seize  and  sack  most  of  that  part  of  Spain  which 
Vallia  and  Constantius  had  reconquered  for  the  empire. 
At  this  time  they  chose  as  their  king  a  bold,  cunning, 
and  intelligent  man  named  Geiseric  or  Genseric. '  The 
chance  was  too  good  to  be  lost.  In  the  spring  of  429 
Genseric  landed  in  Africa  with  a  force  which  seems  to 
have  amounted  to  50,000  men.  The  event  proved  that 
if  it  had  been  difficult  for  the  barbarians  to  set  foot  in 
Africa  it  was  still  more  difficult  to  dislodge  them  when 
they  were  once  established.  It  was  in  vain  that  the 
tragic  misunderstanding  between  the  Regent  and  the 
Count  of  Africa  was  cleared  up,  and  that  the  latter 
did  what  he  could  to  drive  out  the  barbarians  he  had 
himself  invited.  The  Vandals  were  now  in  force  in 
African  territory  where  they  had  found  allies  of  ines- 
timable value  in  the  Donatists  who  had  been  perse- 
cuted by  the  empire.  In  431  the  greater  part  of  the 
northern  Coast  of  Africa,  including  the  three  Maure- 
tanias  and  Numidia,  were  lost  to  Rome.  After  many 
centuries  the  Carthaginian  danger  had  re-arisen  in  a 
new  form. 

This  was  a  terrible,  if  not  a  mortal  blow,  and  it  was 
aggravated  by  a  civil  war  which  developed  out  of  the 
disaster.  In  the  following  year,  432,  Bonifacius  re- 
turned to  Rome  and  Placidia  appointed  him  magister 
militum  of  the  Western  Empire  in  place  of  his  rival 

'  On  Genseric  and  the  Vandals  cf.  the  recent  study  by  F.  Mar- 
troye,  Genseric,  la  conquHe  vandale  en  Afrique  et  la  destruction  de 
Vempire  de  V accident,  Paris,  1907. 


The   Vandals  483 

Aetius,  who  had  been  dismissed  in  spite  of  the  military 
successes  which  he  had  been  winning  since  428  in  Gaul, 
Rhaetia,  and  Noricum.  But  Aetius,  refusing  to  submit 
took  arms  and  the  result  was  an  atrocious  civil  struggle 
of  which  Italy  was  the  scene  and  in  which  Huns  were 
pitted  against  Goths.  Bonifacius  was  victorious  but 
soon  afterwards  died,  and  Aetius,  who  after  his  defeat 
had  taken  refuge  among  the  Huns,  returned  to  Italy 
with  a  Hun  army  and  forced  the  Regent  to  restore 
him  to  his  old  office  (433).  It  was  none  too  soon,  for 
the  civil  war  had  encouraged  disorder  throughout 
the  empire.  Gaul  was  once  more  in  flames.  In  the 
North-west  the  Armoricani  had  revolted;  in  the 
North-east  the  Burgundians  were  expanding;  every- 
where there  were  insurrections  of  peasants  among 
whom  now  reappeared  the  ancient  name  of  the  Bag- 
audi ;  in  the  South  there  was  renewed  unrest  among  the 
Visigoths.  With  indefatigable  energy  Aetius  did  his 
best  to  re-establish  the  situation.  Between  435  and 
437  the  Armoricani  and  the  Bagaudi  were  in  fact  sub- 
dued; the  Burgundians,  after  a  fierce  struggle  which 
lasted  from  437  to  443,  were  removed  into  Sapaudia 
(Savoy)  under  the  same  conditions  as  the  Visigoths  in 
Aquitania  who,  in  their  turn,  were  brought  back  to  a 
strict  observance  of  the  agreement  of  418.  But  all 
these  wars  in  the  West  compelled  the  government  to 
make  terms  with  Genseric  in  Africa.  In  435  Valen- 
tinian  III.  concluded  a  treaty  recognizing  Genseric 
as  possessor  of  the  territory  in  his  power,  that  is  to 
say  of  all  Mauretania  and  part  of  Numidia,  on  con- 
dition of  paying  tribute.  But  with  a  greedy  and  cun- 
ning barbarian  such  as  Genseric,  a  treaty  of  this  kind 
could  be  no  more  than  a  truce,  and  in  439  he  in  fact 
made  himself  master  of  Carthage  by  a  surprise  attack. 


484  The  Catastrophe 

Great  was  the  dismay  caused  by  this  event,  not  only 
in  Italy  but  also  in  the  East,  and  it  was  greater  still 
when  Genseric  attacked  Sicily  in  the  following  year. 
The  Vandals  were  now  threatening  Sicily  and  South 
Italy  from  the  coast  of  Africa  as  the  Carthaginians 
had  done  seven  centuries  before.  If  their  power  were 
to  spread  Egypt,  Syria,  and  Greece  would  also  be  en- 
dangered. The  Vandalic  peril  became  the  common 
anxiety  of  the  courts  of  Rome  and  Constantinople, 
and  in  440  and  441  the  two  empires  made  great  pre- 
parations for  a  joint  expedition  against  Africa.  These 
preparations  alarmed  Genseric  who  had  recourse  to 
negotiation.  He  affected  modesty  and  docility,  and 
promised  not  to  repeat  his  offences.  His  proposals 
were  successful  in  persuading  the  exhausted  empire  to 
give  up  the  idea  of  war  a  outrance  against  him,  and  in 
442  a  treaty  was  signed  whereby  the  map  of  Africa 
was  readjusted.  It  appears  that  Mauretania  and 
part  of  Numidia  were  restored  to  Rome,  while  to 
Genseric  were  ceded  in  exchange  the  Provincia  Pro- 
consularis  and  Bizacene. 

160.  Attila  and  the  Invasion  of  the  Huns.  The 
significance  of  this  rearrangement  is  not  clear.  It 
is  difficult  to  see  who  was  the  gainer  and  who  the 
loser  by  it.  It  is  certain  that  after  this  peace  had 
been  concluded  Genseric  devoted  himself  to  the  forma- 
tion, by  every  kind  of  intrigue,  of  a  barbarian  coali- 
tion against  Rome.  His  conduct  was  undoubtedly 
connected  with  the  rise  of  a  new  and  graver  peril  to 
the  empire;  the  peril  of  the  Huns. 

In  433  Attila  had  ascended  the  throne  of  the  Hun 
nation.  He  was  an  active  and  energetic  prince  who 
had  immediately  taken  measures  to  unite  under  his 
sceptre  a  great  number  of  Hun,  Slavonic,  and  Finnish 


Altiki  and  the  Invasion  of  the  Huns    485 

tribes  of  the  North  and  East  as  well  as  many  Germanic 
peoples  of  Central  Europe,  thus  forming  a  barbarian 
empire  of  vast  extent.  In  444  or  445  he  became  sole 
monarch  on  the  assassination  of  his  brother  Bleda, 
and  commenced  an  attack  on  the  Eastern  Empire 
with  great  forces.  In  447  he  laid  waste  Illyria,  Thrace, 
the  two  Dacias,  Moesia,  and  Scythia,  reaching  the 
Propontis  and  the  MgesiXi  across  Macedonia  and 
Thessaly.  It  was  a  kind  of  avalanche  and,  after  a 
vain  attempt  at  resistance,  Theodosius  II.,  was  com- 
pelled to  buy  peace  at  the  cost  of  paying  tribute  to 
the  barbarian.  This  shameful  peace,  however,  was 
not  of  long  duration.  Theodosius  II.,  died  in  450  and 
his  successor  Marcianus  refused  to  continue  to  pay 
the  tribute.  Attila,  emboldened  by  his  success  in  the 
East  decided  for  the  moment  to  attack  the  occidental 
provinces  where,  a  few  months  after  the  death  of 
Theodosius  II.,  Galla  Placidia  had  also  died  and  had 
been  buried  at  Ravenna  in  the  tomb  which  exists 
to  this  day.  In  451,  having  collected  a  great  army 
composed  of  Huns,  Germans,  Gepidi,  Ostrogoths,  Tur- 
cilingi,  Marcomanni,  Quadi,  Heruli,  and  Franci  Ri- 
parii,  Attila  invaded  the  Gallic  provinces  from  Belgium 
to  Metz.  Metz  was  taken  by  storm  and  destroyed, 
and  the  invading  army  next  threw  itself  on  Orleans. 
Aetius  was  despatched  to  check  the  advance  of  this 
horde.  With  his  usual  skill  and  energy  he  succeeded 
in  opposing  Attila's  coalition  with  one  of  his  own.  He 
collected  an  army  of  Roman  Gauls,  Alani,  allied  Ger- 
mans, Burgundians,  Visigoths,  Franks,  Salii,  and  even 
Riparian  Franks  in  which  the  meagre  Roman  legions 
were  quite  submerged.  In  the  late  summer  the  ad- 
vanced guards  of  the  two  armies  met  on  the  way  to 
Orleans.     After  a  furious  mel^e,  Attila  was  repulsed 


486  The  Catastrophe 

and  had  to  retire  to  the  neighbourhood  of  Troyes 
where  the  plain  begins  which  was  ever  afterwards 
famous  under  the  name  of  the  Campi  Catalauni. 
Here  decisive  battle  was  joined.  It  was  a  terrible 
struggle  which  lasted  for  two  days.  Theodoric,  the 
valiant  chief  of  the  Visigoths,  was  slain,  but  the  ftiry 
of  his  tribesmen  and  the  skill  of  his  son  Torrismondus 
decided  the  combat.     Attila  was  compelled  to  retreat 

(451)- 

Attila's  army,  however,  though  defeated  was  not 
destroyed.  He  retired  to  Pannonia  with  the  ruins  of 
his  forces,  reorganized  them  and  in  the  spring  of  452 
attacked  Italy.  At  this  moment  the  coalition  made 
by  Aetius  was  dissolved.  Fortunately  Attila  was 
checked  before  he  had  advanced  very  far  by  the  fort- 
resses which  he  encountered  on  his  march,  especially 
by  Aquileia  which  he  finally  captured  and  destroyed. 
This  delay  soon  bore  fruit.  Attila's  army  in  the  Vene- 
tian plain  was  wasted  by  hunger,  fever,  and  the  heat  of 
the  sun,  while  the  army  of  the  emperor  Marcianus, 
hastening  to  the  succour  of  the  peninsula,  threatened 
the  audacious  invader  in  the  rear.  It  was  at  this  point 
that  the  Western  court  organized  an  embassy  to  At- 
tila under  the  direction  of  Pope  Leo  I.  which  easily 
persuaded  him  to  retreat;  but,  in  order  to  preserve  the 
West  from  the  tutelage  of  the  East,  allowed  the  worst 
enemy  of  the  empire  to  escape  (453).  Fortunately 
Attila  died  suddenly  in  the  same  year  and  his  motley 
empire  went  to  pieces  in  a  single  day. 

Shortly  afterwards  his  conqueror  followed  him  to 
the  tomb,  a  victim  to  an  intrigue  similar  to  that  which 
had  destroyed  Stilicho.  At  Rome  one  day  while 
Aetius  was  discussing  affairs  of  state  with  Valentinian, 
the  emperor,  whose  ear  had  long  been  poisoned  against 


The  Catastrophe  487 

the  great  general,  by  courtiers,  picked  a  quarrel  with 
him  and  transfixed  him  with  his  sword  (454). 

161.  The  Catastrophe  (454-476  A.D.).  The  death 
of  Aetius  was  not  less  disastrous  than  that  of  Stilicho. 
Valentinian  III.,  did  not  long  survive  his  victim,  for 
on  March  16,  455,  he  too  succumbed  to  a  palace  plot. 
The  dynasty  of  Theodosius  was  extinct,  and  he  was 
succeeded  by  Petronius  Maximus,  a  patrician  and  a 
Roman  senator  who  had  been  the  leader  of  the  con- 
spiracy. It  was  soon  made  clear  what  it  meant  to 
lack  the  firm  hand  of  a  soldier.  A  few  months  after 
the  accession  of  the  new  prince  the  Vandals  appeared 
with  a  numerous  fleet  off  the  mouths  of  the  Tiber  and, 
having  landed  a  force,  marched  on  Rome.  Petronius 
was  terror-stricken,  tried  to  fly,  and  was  torn  to  pieces 
by  the  Romans.  Genseric  took  Rome  which  he  plun- 
dered for  fourteen  days  in  a  much  more  ferocious 
manner  than  Alaric  had  done.  He  then  returned  to 
Africa  laden  with  booty.  The  Hun  peril  having  dis- 
appeared, the  danger  of  the  Vandals  re-emerged  more 
threatening  than  ever,  and  this  coup  de  main  against 
Rome  was  the  beginning  of  a  new  war  in  which  Gen- 
seric aimed  at  making  himself  master  of  all  Roman 
Africa  and  of  the  great  islands  of  the  Mediterranean — 
in  fact  at  reconstituting  the  Carthaginian  empire. 

The  necessities  of  the  situation  required  that  the 
whole  empire,  East  and  West  alike,  should  make  a 
great  effort  to  destroy  Genseric.  The  emperor  Mar- 
cianus  seems  to  have  wished  to  do  so.  But  in  the 
West  there  broke  out  a  new  and  critical  quarrel  about 
the  succession  to  the  empire.  On  the  death  of  Maxi- 
mus the  Visigoths  of  Gaul  induced  their  general  M. 
Eparchius  or  M.  Msecilius  Avitus  to  don  the  imperial 
purple  either  in  July  or  August,  455.     Shortly  after- 


488  The  Catastrophe 

wards  Avitus  appointed  as  commander-in-chief  of  the 
forces  in  Italy  one  Ricimer,  a  prot6g6  of  Aetius,  grand- 
son of  ValHa,  son  of  a  Suevian  chief  and  the  last  of  the 
great  barbarians  of  the  West.  Ricimer  was  then  win- 
ning victories  over  the  Vandals  in  Sicily  and  in  Corsica, 
but  Avitus,  having  been  elected  by  the  Goths,  could 
not  but  be  very  unpopular  in  Italy  and  in  Rome.  The 
opposition  found  a  useful  but  highly  dangerous  weapon 
in  the  new  magister  militum.  Ricimer  came  to  an  un- 
derstanding with  the  senate,  and  deposed  and  defeated 
Avitus;  but  as  the  senate  and  Ricimer  could  not  agree 
as  to  who  should  be  the  new  emperor,  Marcianus  at 
Constantinople  remained  the  sole  sovereign.  Marci- 
anus died  on  January  27, 457  and  was  succeeded  by  Leo 
I.,  who  soon  afterwards  deprived  the  too  presumptu- 
ous Ricimer  of  the  office  of  magister  militum,  consoling 
him  with  the  title  of  Patrician.  For  Ricimer  he  sub- 
stituted Flavius  Julius  Maioranus,  a  general  of  great 
merit  who  was  one  of  the  most  distinguished  pupils  of 
Aetius.  Ricimer  for  the  moment  had  to  give  way,  and 
some  months  later  the  troops  acclaimed  Maioranus 
emperor.  This  choice  was  ratified  at  Constantinople. 
The  Western  Empire  again  had  a  capable  man  as  its 
chief.  His  two  chief  aims  were  to  reduce  the  admin- 
istration to  some  kind  of  order  and  to  destroy  the  power 
of  the  Vandals  in  Africa.  He  took  the  work  in  hand 
with  great  energy.  Though  he  was  hampered  by 
many  difficulties,  and  especially  by  a  war  against  the 
Visigoths  of  Gaul  into  which  King  Th.odoric  had 
thrust  Avitus,  he  managed  to  prepare  a  great  expedi- 
tion against  Africa.  Genseric,  however,  anticipated 
him  and  destroyed  a  great  part  of  the  Roman  fleet 
while  at  anchor  in  the  harbours  of  Spain  before  it 
could  put  to  sea.     This  was  a  serious  blow  which  badly 


The  Catastrophe  489 

weakened  the  authority  of  Maioranus.  Meanwhile 
there  had  arisen  an  agitation  among  the  adminis- 
trative officers  in  the  interior  who  were  being  com- 
pelled by  the  emperor  to  govern  in  a  just  and  upright 
manner.  The  barbarian  troops  were  discontented 
with  his  severe  discipline  and  Ricimer  was  only  wait- 
ing for  a  favourable  opportunity  for  taking  his  revenge. 
Finally  Ricimer  once  more  put  himself  at  the  head  of 
the  malcontents  and  succeeded  in  slaying  Maioranus 
(August  7,  461).' 

Being  a  barbarian  Ricimer  could  not  himself  aspire 
to  the  purple,  but  he  imposed  the  choice  as  ^niperor  of 
Libius  Severus,  an  Italian  who  was  destined  to  be 
a  mere  puppet.  The  death  of  Maioranus,  however, 
raised  against  the  new  government  several  of  his 
generals  such  as  Marcellinus  in  Dalmatia  and  .^gidius 
in  Gaul.  The  new  emperor,  therefore,  found  himself 
confronted  by  grave  difficulties  at  home  by  which  the 
barbarians  did  not  fail  to  profit.  The  Goths,  indeed, 
extended  their  sway  as  far  as  the  north  of  Gaul  and 
Genseric  conquered  Sardinia.  The  four  years  of  the 
reign  of  Severus  were  disastrous,  and,  when  he  died 
in  465,  there  was  an  interregnum  of  two  even  more 
miserable  years,  the  reason  for  which  shows  clearly 
how  lamentably  weak  the  empire  had  become.  Gen- 
seric had  pushed  his  audacity  so  far  as  to  set  up  a 
candidate  of  his  own  for  the  empire,  a  certain  Olybrius; 
and,  as  neither  the  Eastern  Emperor  nor  the  Roman 
senate  (who  did  not  want  him)  dared  to  refuse  for  fear 
of  war  with  the  Vandals,  the  throne  remained  vacant. 

'  On  the  political  struggles  during  the  reign  of  Maioranus  the 
reader  may  consult  R.  Cessi;  Marcellino  e  I'opposizione  imperiale 
romana  sotto  il  governo  di  Majorano,  in  Atti  del  R.  Istituto  veneto 
discienzee  letter  e,  19 15-16. 


490  The  Catastrophe 

This  pusillanimous  conduct  only  increased  the  inso- 
lence of  Genseric,  who  in  467  made  a  direct  attack  on 
the  Eastern  Empire  and  laid  waste  Greece  and  the 
islands  in  order  to  force  Constantinople  to  accept  his 
emperor.  The  Eastern  Emperor  on  this  decided  to 
emerge  from  his  inertia  and  nominated  Procopius 
Antemius,  a  descendant  of  the  ancient  general  Proco- 
pius and  a  son-in-law  of  Marcianus,  to  fill  the  throne 
of  Italy.  The  power  of  Ricimer  was  again  seriously 
shaken  (April  12,  467). 

Procopius,  having  been  elected  to  defy  Genseric, 
soon  resumed  the  idea  of  a  great  Vandalic  war  in 
which  the  two  empires  should  co-operate  with  united 
forces.  Immense  preparations  were  made,  but  owing 
to  the  incapacity,  the  disagreements,  or  the  treachery 
of  some  of  the  generals,  the  enterprise,  which  began 
under  favourable  auspices,  again  failed  (468).  This 
failure  enabled  Ricimer  to  recommence  his  intrigues. 
He  came  to  an  understanding  with  Genseric  and  with 
Euric  King  of  the  Visigoths  and  succeeded  in  foment- 
ing a  war  in  Gaul  between  the  Visigoths  and  Rome. 
Then  taking  advantage  of  this  war  he  marched  on 
Rome  at  the  head  of  an  army.  Having  taken  the 
city  and  murdered  Antemius  (July  1 1 ,  472)  he  caused 
Genseric 's  candidate  Olibrius  to  be  proclaimed  em- 
peror (472). 

The  barbarians  had  triumphed,  but  neither  Ricimer 
nor  Olybrius  lived  long  to  enjoy  their  success.  Both 
died  of  the  plague  in  the  very  same  year.  The 
emperor  Leo  then  nominated  as  Western  Emperor 
Julius  Nepos,  grandson  of  the  great  general  Count 
Marcellinus.  The  barbarian  troops  at  once  set  up 
against  him  a  certain  Glycerins,  but  Nepos  soon  got 
rid  of  him,  and  in  June,  474  he  remained  sole  master  of 


The  Catastrophe  491 

the  last  corner  of  what  had  once  been  the  Roman  Em- 
pire of  the  West.  But  now  a  new  affliction  was  added 
to  the  many  which  tormented  the  empire.  The  tri- 
umph of  Genseric,  the  growing  power  of  the  Visigoths 
in  Gaul,  the  long  predominance  of  Ricimer,  the  in- 
numerable defeats  sustained  by  the  empire  all  im- 
measurably increased  the  pride  and  pretensions  of  the 
barbarians  in  the  imperial  service.  There  was  now  a 
barbarian  party  opposed  to  the  party  of  the  ancient 
Romans  and  each  made  its  appeal  to  a  different  set 
of  sentiments  and  interests.  Nepos  represented  a 
reaction  against  the  barbarians.  But  he  soon  quar- 
relled with  the  national  party  because  in  Gaul  he 
ceded  Alvernia  to  the  Visigoths  by  whom  it  had  been 
conquered  and  the  legions  of  the  north  of  Italy,  which 
were  composed  of  Roman  citizens,  revolted  under  the 
leadership  of  their  general,  a  Romanized  barbarian 
named  Orestes  an  old  officer  of  Attila's,  who  had  trans- 
ferred himself  to  the  service  of  the  empire.  Orestes 
compelled  the  legitimate  emperor  to  fly  from  Ravenna 
to  Salina  in  Dalmatia  (August,  475)  and  raised  his  son 
Romulus  Augustulus  to  the  throne.  The  barbarian 
party  were  not  slow  to  take  their  revenge  and  de- 
manded as  the  price  of  their  acquiescence  in  this  ar- 
rangement, the  cession  of  one  third  of  the  great  estates 
of  Italy.  Orestes  could  not  accomplish  so  tremen- 
dous a  revolution  and  accordingly  refused.  On  this 
Odoacer,  one  of  the  barbarian  officers  of  the  imperial 
guard  was  elected  king  by  his  comrades,  and,  having 
stmimoned  other  bands  of  barbarian  tribes  from  beyond 
the  Alps,  he  attacked  Orestes  who  had  thrown  himself 
into  Pavia  with  the  forces  which  still  remained  loyal, 
took  the  city,  and  overthrew  and  killed  Orestes  (August 
27-28,  476).     Romulus  was  deposed  and  imprisoned 


49-  The  Catastrophe 

in  Campania  near  Naples  on  the  spot  now  covered 
by  the  Castel  dell'TJovo.  The  conqueror  sent  to  the 
Emperor  of  the  East  the  useless  ensigns  of  imperial 
power  and  declared  that  he  would  continue  to  govern 
Italy  as  his  lieutenant. 

Thus  ended,  in  fact  if  not  in  law,  the  history  of  the 
western  part  of  the  Roman  Empire,  and  also,  as  it  is 
usually  reckoned,  the  history  of  antiquity.  Here 
therefore  our  narrative  must  end.  In  reality  the  West 
had  still  a  legitimate,  though  a  deposed  emperor  in  the 
person  of  Julius  Nepos,  and  after  his  death  Italy  was 
not  an  independent  barbarian  kingdom  but  a  province 
of  the  ancient  Roman  Empire  whose  destinies  were 
governed  by  its  supreme  head  from  Constantinople. 
The  unity  of  the  empire  was  not  broken  and  Italy  did 
not  actually  become  a  barbarian  possession  until  after 
the  Lombard  invasion  of  the  peninsula  and  after  the 
Slavs  had  forced  their  way  into  the  north-western 
portion  of  the  Balkan  peninsula,  thus  interrupting 
communications  between  the  East  and  the  West. 
Henceforth,  however,  the  occidental  empire  was  no 
more  than  a  name.  Rome's  great  historic  achievement 
was  destroyed,  and  a  new  era  of  history  began.  The 
Byzantine  or  oriental  empire  on  the  other  hand  was 
destined  to  last  for  more  than  another  thousand  years, 
preserving  in  broad  outline  the  organization  it  had 
received  from  Diocletian  and  Constantine,  until  at 
last  it  fell  under  the  blows  of  the  Turks. 


INDEX 


Abilene,  159 

Abraham,  the  feast  of,  211 

Achaea,  83,  250,  425,  430 

Achaean  League,  the,  83 

Achaemenidae,  356 

Acte,  Nero's  fancy  for,  190; 
neglect  of,  194 

Actium,  59;  battle  at,  60,  459; 
festival  of  the  Victory  at,  157 

Adda,  the  river,  236 

Adiabene,  King  of,  205;  con- 
quest of,  282;  expedition  to, 

337 
Adige,  the  river,  90,  242 
Adrianople,     410;     battle    at, 

415,455 

Adriatic,  the,  32,  476 

JEdui,  the,  95,  168 

^gean  Sea,  the,  61,  298,  485 

^gidius,  489 

i^^lia  Capitolina,  305 

^milianus.  Emperor  M.,  363 

^schylus,  299 

Aetius,  Flavius,  481;  dismissal 
of,  483;  checks  Attila,  485; 
death  of,  486 

Africa,  legions  in,  25;  given  to 
Lepidus,  43;  Octavian  con- 
trols, 50;  forays  in,  246; 
Hadrian's  travels  in,  291, 
295;  Hadrian  again  visits, 
301;  Maximian  rules  in, 
388,  397;  diocese  of,  392; 
religion  in,  413 ;  Constans  in, 
425;  attacks  on,  453;  recon- 
quered by  Rome,  472;  Gen- 
seric  lands  in,  482 


Agrarian  law,  the,  10 
Agricola,  Cn.  Julius,  258,  312 
Agriculture,  133,  276,  302,  325, 

373 

Agrippa,  Herod,  159 

Agrippa,  Marcus  Vipsanius,  40; 
fleet  of,  46;  stratagem  of, 
60;  merit  of,  66;  friend  of 
Augustus,  79;  marries  Julia, 
86;  powers  of,  86;  genius  of, 
96;  death  of,  97 

Agrippina,  daughter  of  Ger- 
manicus,  178;  wife  of  Claud- 
ius, 178;  receives  title  of 
Augusta,  180;  Nero,  son  of, 
180,  182;  restores  the  repub- 
lic, 187;  rupture  with  Nero, 
190;  assassination  of,  193, 
198 

Agrippina,  wife  of  Germani- 
cus,  138;  reconciled  with 
Tiberius,  144;  exiled,  146; 
recalled,  178 

Ahenobarbus,  Domitius,  34, 
35,  42,  56,  61,  178,  181 

Alani,  the,  317,  455,  461,  464, 
478 

Alaric,  proclaimed  emperor, 
470;  Italy  invaded  by,  472, 
475;  defeated  by  Stilicho, 
473;  besieges  Rome,  476, 
477;  receives  Noricum,  476; 
death  of,  477 

Albinus,  D.  Clodius,  333,  334; 
colleague  of  Severus,  335; 
revolt  of,  337;  death  of, 
338 

Alemanni,  the,  358,  364,  365, 
367,  386,  407,  453 


493 


494 


Index 


Alessianus,  353 

Alexander,   son   of   Cleopatra, 

54 
Alexander,  Bishop,  417 
Alexander  the  Great,  202,  281, 

303,  351 
Alexandria,  Antony  at,  41 ;  do- 
nations of,  52,  54;  Antony's 
triumph  at,  53;  Octavian 
enters,  64;  Vespasian  pro- 
claimed emperor,  240 ;  growth 
of,  325;  the  church  of, 
382;  insurrection  at,  396; 
Alexander,  bishop  of,  417; 
the  Episcopal  see  at,  458; 
pagans    and    Christians    in, 

463 

Aliso,  the  river,  98 

Allectus,  396 

AUobroges,  the,  234 

Altinum,  475 

Alvernia,  491 

Amanus  Range,  the,  45 

Ambracian  Gulf,  the,  60 

Amida,  fortress  of,  441 

Amnesty  of  March  17th,  the, 
1,4,  8,  28;  amnesty  in  Italy, 
44;  amnesty  of  Nov.  13,  51; 
Otho  grants,  232 

Amphictyonic     Council,     the, 

83 

Ananes,  the,  168 

Anatolia,  surrendered  to  Rome, 
85;  Cilicia  and,  134 

Ancona,  harbour  of,  275 

Ancyra,  369 

Andalusia,  478 

Andronicus,  Livius,  69 

Anglesey,  201,  259 

Anicetus,  commander,  196; 
murders  Agrippina,  198 

Antemius,  Procopius,  490 

Antioch,  the  nuptials  of,  47; 
Trajan  at,  282;  Hadrian  at, 
285;  illumination  of,  302; 
Marcus  Aurelius  in,  321; 
growth  of,  325;  Claudius  in, 
369;  Christians  in,  430;  the 
Council  at,  432;  the  Episco- 
pal see  at,  458 

Antiochia,  armies  in,  315 


Antiochus,  king,  159,  200 
Antipatria,  218 
Antium,  Agrippina  at,  197 
Antonia,  wife  of  Drusus,   149; 

Livilla,    daughter    of,    151; 

Caligula,  grandson  of,    156; 

Tiberius,  son  of,  162 
Antonines,    the    age    of    the, 

253 

Antoninus,  T.  ^lius  Hadri- 
anus,  306,  313 

Antoninus,  Marcus  Aurelius, 
307;  Lucius  ^lius  Verus, 
313;  elected  emperor,  313; 
the  Oriental  war,  314;  the 
revolt  of  Cassius,  319;  per- 
secution of  Christians,  32 1 ; 
triumph  at  Rome,  322; 
statue  to,  322;  adopts  L. 
Aurelius  Commodus,  322 ; 
death  of,  323;  administra- 
tion of,  323;  Bassianus  as- 
sumes name  of,  353;  pro- 
claimed emperor,  353 

Antonius,  Caius,  20,  21,  39, 
40 

Antonius,  Marcus  (Mark  An- 
tony), Consul,  i;  funeral 
oration  of,  7;  master  of  the 
State,  9;  quarrel  with  Octa- 
vius,  10;  mutiny  of  the  Le- 
gions of,  16;  war  declared 
on,  20;  retreat  of,  22;  joined 
by  Lepidus,  22,  25;  the 
triumvirs,  29;  defeats  Bru- 
tus, 36;  Fulvia,  wife  of, 
38;  visits  Cleopatra,  41;  at 
Brundusium,  43;  marries 
Octavia,  43;  at  Athens,  42, 
45;  becomes  King  of  Egypt, 
47;  disaster  at  Parthia,  49; 
Oriental  policy  of,  52;  di- 
vorces Octavia,  53,  58;  con- 
quers Armenia,  53 ;  Ptolemy, 
son  of,  54;  plans  to  over- 
throw Octavian,  56;  at  Ephe- 
sus,  57;  at  Actium,  59,  60; 
renounces  the  Republic,  62; 
defeat  and  death  of,  64; 
memory  of,  157 

Apollo,  temple  of,  90 


Index 


495 


Apollodorus,  275 

Appennines,  the,  23 

Appolonia,  Octavius  at,  9; 
siege  of,  20 

Aquileia,  223,  236,  316,  361, 
431,  459,  462,  475.  486 

Aquitania,  95,  222,  479,  483 

Arabia,  Petrasa,  274,  285, 
388 

Arabia,  province  of,  274;  Ha- 
drian visits,    302;  panic  in, 

457 

Araxis,  valley  of  the,  48,  49 

Arbogastes,  General,  461; 
quarrel  with  Valentinian  II., 
463 ;  death  of,  464 

Arcadians,  the,  456 

Arcadius,  son  of  Theodosius, 
469;  death  of,  475 

Archelaus,  King,  200 

Archon  and  Agonothetes,  300 

Ardeshir,  356 

Argentoratum,  439 

Argos,  299,  366 

Arian  heresy,  the,  417,  459 

Arianism,  430,  458 

Ariminium,  Antony  at,  17 

Aristides,  326 

Aristobulus,  King,  200 

Aristocracy,  Cassar  and  the, 
3;  confiscation  of  lands  of 
the,  30;  decadence  of  the, 
37;  the  original,  66;  glorious 
days  of  the,  73;  restoration 
of  the,  89;  power  of  the, 
121;  pride  of  ancestry  of 
the,  246;  the  senatorial, 
266 

Arius,  the  priest,  417,  418, 
426 

Aries,  Christian  council  at, 
414 

Armenia,  Atropatene,  48 

Armenia,  contingents  from, 
48;  Antony  conquers,  53, 
Alexander  of,  54;  revolution 
in,  84;  invaded  by  Parth- 
ians,  107;  Roman  influence 
in,  120;  influence  of  Parthia, 
134;  Zeno,  King  of,  136; 
King  Artaxes  of,  136;  under 


Tiridates,  192,  207;  war  with 
Rome,  198;  King  Tigranes, 
200;  evacuation  of,  206; 
King  Parthomasiris  of,  282; 
a  Roman  province,  282; 
restoration  of,  286;  Parthia 
invades,  314;  under  Persia, 
364;  again  under  Rome, 
387;  invasion  by  King  Nar- 
setes,  397 ;  King  Hanniballia- 
nus,  425;  loss  of  the  fortress 
at,  451 

Arminius,  113;  head  of  the 
Cherusci,  126;  Tusnelda, 
wife  of,  127;  defeat  of,  129; 
death  of,  143 

Armisda,  427 

Armoricani,     revolt     of     the, 

483 
Arsacidae,  356 
Arsanides,  the  river,  206 
Artabanus,    King,     134,     137, 

357 

Artaxata,  burning  of,  200 

Artaxerxes,  356,  361 

Artaxes,  King,  136 

Arvemi,  the,  95 

Asia,  the  province  of,  20, 
83;  Cassius  in,  33;  Ha- 
drian  in,  297;   Constantius 

in,  425 

Asia  Minor,  Brutus  in,  32; 
falls  to  Antony,  43;  Augus- 
tus in,  83;  Germanicus  in, 
136;  growth  of,  297 ;  religion 
of,  298 ;  Diocletian  in,  388 

Asiana,  392 

Assyria:  conquest  of,  282; 
given  to  Parthia,  286 

Astarte,  354 

Asturians,  war  against  the, 
76,78 

Ataulfus,  Alaric  succeeded  by, 
478;  death  of,  479 

Athanasianism,  430 

Athanasius,  Bishop,  426;  rein- 
stated, 434 

Atheneeum,  the,  301 

Athenians,  amnesty  invented 
by  the,  4 

Athenodorus,  369 


496 


Index 


Athens,  exiles  at,  19;  Antony 
and  Fulvia  in,  42;  Antony 
returns  to,  45,  58;  Germani- 
cus  in,  136;  a  university 
town,   299;   the   Heruli   at, 

365 

Atlas,  the,  296 
Attalus,  476 

Attila,    484;    devastation    by, 
485;  defeat  of,  486;  death  of, 
486 
Augusta,     Agrippina    receives 

title  of,  180 
Augusta,  Emerita,  295 
Augustan  Republic,  the,  66 
Augustulus,  Romulus,  491 
Augustus,  Emperor,  41,  51,  66; 
Octavian  given  title  of,  72; 
donations   of,    73;   first   war 
of,    76;    serious    illness    of 
79;  increased  powers  of,  80 
journey    to    the    East,    82 
temple    dedicated    to,     84 
Julia,  daughter  of,  86;  cam- 
paign in  Gaul,  93;  the  scan- 
dal  of   Julia,    108;   govern- 
ment of  Tiberius  and,   no; 
death  of,  1 14,  115;  the  policy 
of,  115 
Aurelianus,  L.  Domitius,  366; 
proclaimed     emperor,     368; 
death  of,  370 
Aurelius,     Marcus     (see     An- 
toninus) 
Autun,  siege  of,  439 
Avitus,  M.  Maecilius,  487 

B 

Baetica,  478 
Bagaudi,  the,  384,  483 
Bahram,  King,  386 
Baiae,    Nero    at,    196;    Hadri- 
an's death  at,  307 
Balbinus,  Decimus,  360 
Balkans,    the    Goths    in    the, 

455 
Balkan  peninsula,  the,  367,  410 
Barkokeba,  Simon,  305 
Basilica,  Porcia,  the,  460 
Bassianus,  Septimius,  338,  345, 
352 


Bassianus,  Varius  Avitus,  353; 
proclaimed  emperor,  353 ; 
death  of,  354 

Bassus,  Ventidius,  18,  20,  23, 
24;  victory  of,  45,  46 

Batavi,  the,  245 

Bavaria,  91 

Bedriacum,  236 

Belgica,  95 

Belgium,  Attila  invades,  485 

Berytus,  241 

Besangon,  223 

Bessi,  the,  90 

Bezabda,  441 

Bithynia,  falls  to  Antony,  43; 
Pliny  at,  279;  Diocletian  in, 
388 

Bizacene.  484 

Black  Sea,  the,  366 

Bleda,  death  of,  485 

Bodotria,  the  river,  259 

Bohemia,  112 

Bologna,  24,  29 

Bonifacius,  481 ;  made  magister 
militum,  482 

Bononia,  24,  29 

Borani,  the,  365 

Bordeaux,  293,  479 

Bostra,  city  of,  274 

Bretoni,  the,  283 

Brigetium,  454 

Britain,  Conquest  of,  166,  257; 
insurrection  in,  200,  207; 
peace  in,  219;  Hadrian  in, 
294;  expansion  of  Rome 
in,  312;  Albinus  proclaimed 
emperor,  333;  Severus  in, 
346;  raids  on,  385;  Dio- 
cletian in,  388;  recovery  of, 
396;  Constantius  in,  397, 
425;  Julian  in,  438 

Britain  assailed  by  the  Saxons, 
453;  Maximus  of,  459,  460; 
troops  withdrawn  from,  473 ; 
invasion  of,  474;  loss  of,  480 

Britannia,  392 

Britannicus,  son  of  Claudius, 
175,  181,  190,  191 

Bructeri,  the,  127 

Brundusium,  blockade  of,  33; 
Fulvia  at, 41 ;  treaty  of,  42,  43 


Index 


497 


Brutus,  Decimus,  ii,  17,  21, 
24,  26,  28 

Brutus,  Marcus,  5;  home 
burned,  7;  successes  of,  19, 
20;  pro-consul,  20;  recalled 
to  Italy,  25;  in  Asia  Minor, 
32;  death  of,  36;  images  of, 

275 
Bucolici,  the,  319 
Burdigaia,  293 
Burgundi,  the,  386,  387,  474 
Burgundians,  the,  483 
Burrus,     Afranius,     187,     188, 

192,  198,  204 
Busento,  the  river,  477 
Byzantium,    250;    Severus   at, 

336;   fall  of,   337;   storming 

of,    410;    Licinius    at,    415; 

Constantine  in,  424 
Byzantine  Empire,  the,  492 


C 


Cseciliani,  the,  413 

Caecina,  Alienus,  234,  241 

Cagcina,  Aulus,  128 

Caesar,  acts  of  Julius,  I ; 
assassination  of,  i ;  funeral 
of,  4,  7 ;  will  of,  5 ;  burning  of 
the  body  of,  7;  the  son  of,  8, 
10;  acts  of  aggression  of,  15; 
Cleopatra  and,  41,  54;  Cassar- 
ion,  son  of,  54,  64 

Caesar,  Caius,  son  of  Agrippa, 
104;  honours  to,  107;  death 
of,  109 

Caesar,  Lucius,  son  of  Agrippa, 
107;  death  of,  108 

Caesaraugusta,  295 

Caesarea,  218,  430 

Caesarion,  son  of  Caesar,  54, 
55;  death  of,  64 

Caledonia,  259,  346 

Caligula,  Caius,  son  of  Ger- 
manicus,  153;  elected  em- 
peror, 155;  madness  of,  157; 
hatred  for,  160;  death  of,  161 

Callinicum,  462 

Campania,  Octavian  at,  13; 
Villas  of,  30;  Agrippa  dies 
in,  97;  Romulus  in,  492 

VOL.  II — 32 


Campi  Catalaunici,  453,  486 
Campus  Martius,  the,  7,   147, 

322 
Camulodunum,  167 
Camuni,  the,  90 
Canidius,  P.,  62,  64 
Cantabrians,   war  against  the, 

76,  78 
Cape  Tasnarus,  60 
Capito,  Titinius,  275 
Capitol,  conspirators  at  the,  i ; 

burning  of  the,  243;  rebviilt 

by  Vespasian,  255 
Capitoline  games,  the,  262 
Cappadocia,     134,    298,    342, 

357,  432 
Capri,  Tiberius  at,  144,  145 
Caracalla,    338;    M.    Aurelius 

Antoninus,  350;  death  of,  352 
Carausius,    386;    raises   army, 

387;  death  of,  396 
Carinus,  372,  384 
Carnuntum,  255,  404 
Carpi,  the,  361 
Carrhffi,  battle  of,  46 
Cartagena,  295 
Carthage,  growth  of,  296,  325; 

the  bishop  of,  413;  Genseric 

in,  483 
Carus,  M.  Aurelius,  371;  suc- 
cessor to,  384 
Cassius,   Avidius,   315;   revolt 

of,    319;    letter    from,    320; 

death  of,  321 
Cassius,  practical  mind  of,  5; 

home  burned,  7;  recalled  to 

Italy,  25;  joins  forces  with 

Brutus,    32;    death    of,    35; 

images  of,  275 
Castel  deirUovo,  492 
Castelfranco,  21 
Castra  Vetera,  128 
Cataline,  conspiracy  of,  9 
Catholic    Church,     the,     419; 

origins    of    the,     431;     the 

Great  Catholic  reaction,  457 
Catholicism,  triumph  of,  462 
Cato,  images  of,  275 
Catti,  the,  99,  112,  127,  314 
Caucasus,    war    in    the,    221; 

alliance  in  the,  398 


498 


Index 


Cauci,  the,  130,  314 
Celesiria,  54,  159 
Celti,  the,  91,  245 
CentumcellEe,  275 
Cerialus,  Q.  Petitius,  246 
Chasrea,  Cassius,  161 
Chalons-sur-Marne,  453 
Chatti,  the,  259 
Cherusci,  the,  100,  126;  defeat 
of   the,    129;    wars   of   the, 

143 

China,  133,  302,  325 

Chinese,  the,  454 

Chlorus,  388,  403 

Chosroes,  King,  282,  286,  296 

Christ,  origin  of,  419 

Christians,  the,  209;  progress 
of  Christianity,  279;  growth 
at  Lyons,  293;  Hadrian  and 
the,  300;  persecution  of  the, 
321,  343.  398;  growth  in 
Rome  and  Alexandria,  430 

Christianity,  378;  triumph  of, 
408,  414 

Chrysopolis,  battle  near,  416 

Cibalae,  411 

Cicero,  conspirators  with,  2; 
proposes  amnesty,  4;  flight 
of,  8;  at  Puteoli,  8,  13;  the 
De  Officiis,  13,  72;  opposed 
to  Antony,  17;  amnesty 
repealed,  28;  death  of,  31; 
de  Republica  of,  71;  books 
of,  253;  the  dreams  of, 
277 

Cilicia,  48;  King  Ptolemy  of, 
54;  under  Rome,  134;  an- 
nexed to  Syria,  136;  tax- 
ation in,  250;  flourishing 
condition,  298;  Maximin  in, 
410 

Cimbri,  the,  ill 

Cinna,  Cornelius,  109 

Cisalpine  Gaul,  ii;  troops  in, 
17;  surrender  of,  18;  pro- 
consul of,  25;  confiscation  in, 

30 
Civil  War,  the  third,  17,  42,  59 
Civilis,  Julius,  245 
Civitavecchia,  275 
Classicus,  Julius,  245 


Claudii,  the,  102,  104 

Claudius,  M.  Aurelius,  366; 
elected  emperor,  367;  death 
of,  368 

Claudius,  Tiberius,  emperor, 
153;  election  of,  161;  con- 
quest of  Britain,  166;  be- 
comes censor,  169;  Plautia 
Urgulanilla,  wife  of,  170; 
Valeria  Messalina,  wife  of, 
170;  ^lia  Paetina,  170; 
Britannicus,  son  of,  175; 
Agrippina,  wife  of,  178; 
adopts  Nero,  181;  Octavia, 
daughter  of,  182 

Claudius,  Emperor  Tiberius, 
death  of,  183;  poisoning  of, 
184    ■ 

Cleopatra,  Queen,  32;  sub- 
sidies of,  33;  Antony  visits, 
41 ;  Antony  marries,  47; 
influence  of,  53,  58;  queen 
of  kings,  54;  Cassarion,  Ptol- 
emy, Alexander  and  Cleo- 
patra, 54;  victory  of,  62; 
Octavian  wars  on,  63 ;  death 
of,  64 

Cleopatra,  daughter  of  Queen 
Cleopatra,  54 

Clodius,  old  Collegia  of,  2;  the 
days  of,  13 

Clota,  the  river,  259 

Clyde,  the  river,  259 

Coblenz,  fortress  at,  99 

Codex  Justinianus,  467 

Coinage,  reform  of  the,  396; 
under  Constantine,  411 

Colchester,  England,  167 

Collegia  juvenum,  202 

Cologne,  180,  268,  439 

Colonia,  268,  439 

Colosseum,  the,  255 

Comitia,  the,  4 

Comitia  centuriata,  the,  27 

Comitia  curiata,  the,  10 

Comitia  tributa,  the,  10 

Commagene,  134,  136,  158, 
200,  240,  250 

Commodus,  L.  Aurelius,  322; 
made  emperor,  329;  death 
of,  331;  estate  of,  337 


Index 


499 


Concordia,  476 

Confiscation  of   property,   30; 

of  money,  31 
Coniuratio  Italice,  the,  59 
Consentia,  477 
Consistorium,  the,  462 
Conspiracy  of  42  a.d.,  164 
Constance,  the  lake  of,  438 
Constans,  son  of  Constantine, 

425;   made   Augustus,    430; 

death  of,  434 
Constantia,    wife   of    Licinius, 

407 
Constantina,    wife   of   Gallus, 

437  ,        ,  . 

Constantine  (proclaimed  the 
Great),  Cassar,  403;  marries 
Fausta,  405;  becomes  em- 
peror, 405;  triumphal  arch 
to,  408;  Crispus,  son  of,  41 1 ; 
letter  from,   418;  death  of, 

427 

Constantine,  son  of  Constan- 
tine, 425;  becomes  Constan- 
tine II.,  430;  death  of,  431 

Constantinople,  426;  revolt  at, 
429;  Constantius  in,  430; 
Julian  at,  442;  attacks  on, 
456;  the  Council  at,  458; 
rights  equal  to  Rome,  470; 
Italy  governed  from,  492 

Constantinus,  Flavius,  474; 
confronted  by  Barbarians, 
478 

Constantius  (Chlorus),  Caesar, 
388;  in  Britain,  397;  becomes 
emperor,  402 ;  death  of,  403 

Constantius  II.,  son  of  Con- 
stantine the  Great,  425; 
becomes  Augustus,  430;  sole 
emperor,  434;  death  of, 
442 

Constantius  III.,  defeats  Con- 
stantine, 478;  marries  Placi- 
dia,  480 

Consulares,  the,  392 

Corbulo,  L.  Domitius,  193, 
200,  205,  207 

Cordova,  295 

Corduba,  295 

Corinth,  capital  of  Greece  at, 


83 ;  canal  at,  22 1 ;  baths  at, 
299;  the  Heruli  at,  366; 
Stilicho  at,  471 

Corinthians,  the,  456 

Cornificius,  25 

Corpo,  60 

Correctores,  the,  392 

Corsica,  488 

Cosenza,  477 

Cottian  Alps,  the,  91,  92,  234 

Crassus,  aggression  of,  15; 
expedition  of,  84 

Cremona,  235,  242,  476 

Crete,  48,  60 

Crispus,  411;  made  Caesar, 
415;  death  of,  420 

Ctesiphon,  Trajan  in,  282; 
burning  of,  315;  plundering 
of,  342;  invasion  of,  372; 
Constantine  at,  427;  Julian 
at,  449 

Curia  Romana,  the,  459,  463 

Curiales,  the,  468 

Custoboci,  the,  318 

Cyclades,  the,  299,  357,  367 

Cydnus,  the  river,  456 

Cyprus,  47;  added  to  Egypt, 
54;  Octavian  pro-consul  in, 
7 1 ;  handed  over  to  the 
Senate,  82;  Jewish  rebellion 
in,  283;  Germanic  invasion 
of,  367 

Cyrenaica,  the,  43,  54,  60, 
283 

Cyrene,  60 

Cyrus  the  Great,  356 

Cyzicus,  battle  at,  336 


D 


Dacia  Ripensus,  368 

Dacians,  the,  246;  war  with 
the,  261,  262,  271;  conquest 
of  the,  273,  275;  German 
invasion,  316;  Decius,  gov- 
ernor of,  362;  invasion  by 
Goths,  363;  evacuation  of 
the  Romans,  368;  in  Roman 
army,  397;  Licinius  rules 
the,  411 


500 


Index 


Dacia,  devastation  of,  456; 
assigned  to  East  division, 
469 

Dadartana,  452 

Daius,  Maximinus,  402,  406 

Dalamatius,  Caesar,  425;  death 
of,  429 

Dalmatia,  Octavian  in,  52; 
the  legions  of,  166,  240; 
declares  for  Otho,  233;  Dio- 
cletian born  in,  384,  401; 
Valerius  rules  in,  388;  Licin- 
ius  in,  411;  devastation  in, 
456;  assigned  to  the  East, 
469 

Dalmatians,  revolt  of  the, 
112 

Damascus,  274 

Danube,  the,  91,  92,  114,  234, 
255,  266,  455 

Dardania,  411,  456 

Dardanelles,  the,  366 

Dea  Tellus,  temple  of,  2 

Decebalus,  261,  263,  271 

Decius,  C.  Messius,  362;  death, 

363 

Delphi,  the  Council  at,  83 

Demosthenes,  299 

Dentheletas,  the,  90 

De  Officiis  of  Cicero,  the,  13, 
72 

De  Republica  of  Cicero,  71 

Dertona,  24 

Diadochi,  the,  356 

Dio,  338 

Dio,  Cassius,  66,  173 

Diocletianus,  G.  Aurelius  Val- 
erius, 372;  accession  of,  383; 
at  battle  of  the  Morava,  384; 
in  Bithynia,  389;  reforms  of, 
395;  persecution  of  the 
Christians,  399 ;  abdication 
of,  401 ;  death  of,  410;  great- 
ness of,  427 

Dniester,  the  river,  454 

Dolabella,  Cornelius,  10 ;  de- 
feat of,  25 

Dominus,  Severus  assumes  title 

of,  345.  355 
Domitian,    T.    Flavius,     156; 
the    future    emperor,    243; 


elected  emperor,  257;  suc- 
cesses in  Germany,  259; 
becomes  Censor,  260;  opposi- 
tion of  the,  263;  death  of, 
265 

Domna,  Julia,  339,  346,  353 

Don,  the  river,  454 

Donatism,  413 

Donatists,  the,  482 

Donatus,  413 

Drave,  the  river,  241 

Druids,  the,  201 

Drusilla,  157 

Drusus,  son  of  Livia,  92;  sent 
against  Germany,  98;  death 
of,  100;  canal  built  by,  97, 
III;  Germanicus,  son  of, 
126;  Antonia,  wife  of,  149 

Drusus,  son  of  Tiberius,  132; 
death  of,  144;  Livilla,  wife 
of,    151;    Tiberius,    son   of, 

153 
Durazzo,  33,  471 
Dux,  the,  391 
Dyrrhachium,  33,  471 


E 


Eboracum,  346,  403 

Eclogues,  the,  65 

Edessa,  353 

Egypt,  32,  41 ;  Antony  becomes 
King  of,  47,  53;  increased 
boundaries  of,  54;  Octavian 
conquers,  64;  adoration  of 
monarchs,  83 ;  Germanicus 
in,  137;  troubles  in,  218; 
Vespasian  proclaimed  em- 
peror, 240;  Jews  rebel  in, 
283;  Hadrian  in,  296,  302, 
303;  insurrection  by  the 
Bucolici,  319 

Egypt,  Zenobia  in,  369;  recon- 
quered by  Aurelian,  370; 
unrest  in,  387;  Diocletian  in, 
388,  397;  Constantius  in, 
425;  religious  wars  in,  463 

Elbe,  the  river,  97,  1 1 1 

Eletea,  318 

Emesa,  353,  369 

Ems,  the  river,  96,  127,  129 


Index 


501 


Ennius,  69 

Eparchius,  General  M.,  487 

Ephesus,  Antony  at,  57;  growth 

and  riches  of,    325;    Gallus 

at,  437  . 
Epicureanism,  69 
Epidamnus,  9 
Epigoni,  the,  356 
Epirus,  garrison  at,  60;  Octa- 

vian's  army  in,  60  included 

in  Greece,   83;  Licinius  in, 

411;    devastation    of,    456; 

ceded  to  the  Goths,  471 
Equestrian  order,  the,  78,  106, 

145.    235,     252,    288,    340, 

356 
Etruria,   German  invasion  in, 

473 

Etruscans,  the,  91 

Euboea,  83,  136 

Eudoxia,  daughter  of  Theo- 
dosius  II.,  481 

Eugenius,  463 ;  death  of,  464 

Euphrates,  the  river,  160; 
facts  of  the,  206,  449;  con- 
quests on  the,  281,  315; 
frontiers  on  the,  286;  pill- 
age on  the,  456 

Euric,  King,  490 

Europe,  beginning  of  the  his- 
tory of,  94,  116 

Eusebia,  Empress,  438 

Eusebius,  427 

Eutropius,  the  Eunuch,  471 


Faesulas,  474 

Fano,  368 

Fanum  Fortunas,  368 

Fausta,  wife  of  Constantine, 
405;  death  of,  420 

Fiesole,  474 

Finances,  reorganization  of, 
72,  74;  disorder  of  the,  105; 
administration  of  the,  133; 
under  Caligula,  161;  under 
Galba,  228;  under  Ves- 
pasian, 248,  277;  under 
Trajan,  277;  under  Con- 
stantine, 412 


Flavian  amphitheatre,  the,  255, 

301 
Flavians,  the,  242 
Florianus,  M.  Annius,  371 
Forth,  the  river,  259 
Forum  Gallorvmi,  21 
Forum  Julii,  25 
Forum  of  Trajan,  275 
Forum  Vocontii,  25 
Franci  Riparii,  the,  485 
Franks,  the,  364,  365,  387,  407 
Fr^jus,  25 

Frigidus,  the  river,  464 
Frisii,  the,  98 
Fulvia,     Antony's     wife,     38; 

plans  to  govern  Rome,  39; 

at   Brundusium,   41 ;   death 

of,  43 
Fuscus,  Cornelius,  262 


Gastulians,  the,  453 

Gastulicus,  Cn.  Cornelius,  160 

Gainas,  the  Goth,  471 

Galba,  Servius  Sulpicius,  222; 
revolt  of,  223;  election  of, 
225;  death  of,  232 

Galerius,  Csesar,  387;  at  Tre- 
veri,  389;  at  Pannonia,  397; 
persecution  of  the  Chris- 
tians, 400 ;  becomes  emperor, 
402;  death  of,  406;  wife  of, 
410 

Galicia,  478 

Galilee,  conquest  of,  220 

Galla,  Sosia,  174 

Galla,  sister  of  Valentinian  II., 
461;  held  as  hostage,  476; 
marries  Constantius,  480; 
death  of,  485 

Gallia,  392 

Gallia  Cisalpina,  11,  92 

Gallia  Narbonensis,  22;  gover- 
nor of,  22,  42;  Antony  in, 
25,  38;  falls  to  Octavian, 
43,  82;  Valens  in,  234 

Gallia  Transalpina,  28;  falls  to 
Octavian,  43,  71;  progress 
in,  75;  ferment  in,  90;  sen- 
ators from,  168 


502 


Index 


Gallienus,  P.  Licinius,  364; 
death  of,  366 

Gallus,  429;  made  Caesar,  437; 
death  of,  437 

Gallus,  Asinius,  171 

Gallus,  Caius  Cornelius,  65 

Gallus,  Cestius,  218 

Gallus,  G.  Vibius  Trebonianus 
proclaimed  emperor,  363 

Games  of  the  Victory  of  Caesar, 
12 

Gaul,  Octavian's  Empire,  50, 
65;  Augustus  in,  76;  riches 
of,  77;  romanization  of,  85; 
development  of,  89;  German 
invasion  of,  91;  industry  of, 
95;  division  of,  95;  protec- 
tion from  Germany,  131; 
Claudius  in,  168;  insur- 
rection in,  222;  Galba  in, 
227;  insurrection  in,  245; 
Hadrian  in,  292;  Albinus 
revolt  in,  342;  invasion  by 
Germany,  358;  Franks'  in- 
vasion of,  365;  rebellion  of 
the  Bagaudi,  384;  Constan- 
tius  rules  in,  388,  425;  in- 
surrection in,  436;  Julian  in, 
438;  attacked  by  the  Ale- 
manni,  453;  invasion  by 
Maximus,  459;  invaded  by 
Vandals,  474,  483 

Gazaca,  battle  of,  49 

Gehenna,  211 

Genseric,  King  of  the  Vandals, 
482;  Rome  makes  terms 
with,  483;  Rome  plundered 
by,  487,  488;  conquest  of 
Sardinia  by,  489;  the  tri- 
umph of,  491 

Georgia,  398 

Gepidas,  the,  387 

Gepidi,  the,  485 

Germania,  392 

Germania  Inferior,  231,  368 

Germania  Superior,  223,  230, 
368 

Germanicus,  126;  defeats 
Arminius,  129;  triumph  of, 
132,  134;  mission  to  the 
East,    134,    137;   Agrippina, 


wife  of,  138;  death  of,  138; 
Nero,  son  of,  144;  Caius, 
son  of,  148;  Tiberius,  bro- 
ther of,  162 
Germannia,  conquest  of,  89; 
Gaul  invaded  by,  91,  94; 
Drusus  invades,  100;  sub- 
mission of,  loi;  revolts  in, 
109;  suppression  of  revolt, 
no,  113;  Roman  war  on, 
125;  invasion  of,  127;  upper 
and  lower,  132;  legions  from, 
227;  revolt  of  the  legions, 
230;  Italy  invaded  by  legions 
from,  232;  first  wars  in,  257; 
revolt  in,  259;  oppression  of 
Roumania,  273;  Hadrian  in, 
293;  Rome  raided  by,  314; 
the  first  invasion  of,  315; 
Rome  conquers,  318;  Cara- 
calla  in,  351;  invasion  of 
Gaul,  358;  internal  wars, 
387;  rising  of  the  Germans, 
438;  Rome  attacked  by, 
453;  Alemanni  in,  455;  in- 
vasion   under     Radagaisus, 

473 

Geta,  son  of  Severus,  345; 
death  of,  350 

Gildo,  Governor,  472 

Glycerius,  490 

Gordianus  II.,  360 

Gordian  III.,  361 

Gordianus,  M.  Antonius,  360 

Gorizia,  464 

Goths,  the,  361;  war  against 
the,  362;  plunder  by  the, 
365;  coalition  with  the  Ale- 
manni, 367;  struggles  of 
the,  387;  in  Roman  army, 
397;  campaign  against  the, 
425;  attack  on  Africa  by 
the,  453;  Valens  wages  war 
against,  454;  Theodosius  de- 
feats the,  457;  rebellion  of 
the,  470 

GrcBculus,  286  {see  Hadrian) 

Gratian,  Emperor,  455;  death 

of,  459 
Greater  Roumania,  273 
Greece,    Brutus    in,    20;    falls 


Index 


503 


Greece —  Continued 

to  Antony,  43;  Army  of 
Antony  in,  60;  Augustus  in, 
83;  Germanicus  in,  136; 
Nero  in,  216,  221;  Hadrian 
in,  297,  302;  decay  of,  299; 
invasion  of,  318,  367,  470; 
Galerius  rules  in,  388;  Lici- 
nius  in,  411;  devastation  in, 
456,  490 

Gregory,  St.,  456 

Grenoble,  26 

Grisons,  91 

Grutungi,  the,  454 

Gymnasium  at  Alexandria,  the, 
54 


H 


Hadrian,  Emperor,  284;  nick- 
named GrcECulus,  286;  re- 
forms of,  287;  travels  of, 
29 1 ;  the  "  Restorer  of  Gaul, " 
293 ;  treatment  of  Christians, 
300;  great  buildings  of,  301 ; 
mausoleum  for,  301 ;  second 
series  of  travels,  301 ;  on  the 
Egyptians,  304;  villa  at 
Tibur,  301,  306;  adoptions 
of,  306;  death  of,  307 

Hadrianus,  P.  .i^lius,  285 

Hadrianopolis,  300 

Hadrumetum,  334 

Halys,  the  river,  456 

Hanniballianus,  425, 427 ;  death 
of,  429 

Harpocrates,  165 

Helicon,  157 

Heliogabalus,  temple  of,  353; 
the  Emperor,  353,  378 

Hellenism,  253,  256,  257,  262, 
287,  298,  307,  311 

Hellespont,  the,  298,  415 

Helvetii,  the,  219,  234 

Heraclea,  battle  near,  410 

Hercules,  the  image  of,  463 

Rerculius,  385,  389 

Hermonduri,  the,  317 

Herod,  King,  107,  159,  200 

Heruli,  the,  365,  386,  485 

Hibernia,  259 


Hirtius,  Consul,  19,  21,  22,  23, 

26 
Hispania,  392 
Holland,  98 
Honorius,  son  of  Theodosius, 

469;    residence    in     Milan, 

473;  deposed  by  the  Senate, 

476;  death  of,  480 
Horace,  90,  253 
Horti  Serviliani,  the,  224 
Hungarians,  the,  261 
Hungarian  oppression,  273 
Huns,  the,  454,  461,  464,  483, 

484 


I 


Iberia,  King  Pharasmanes  of, 
200;  vassal  state  to  Rome, 
398;  Christianity  in,  427; 
Iberians  in  army  of  Theo- 
dosius, 464 

Iberian  peninsula,  76;  rising  in 
the,  91 

Ides  of  March,  the,  17,  135, 
225 

Idistavisto,  battle  at,  129 

Ilerda,  42 

Ilissus,  the  river,  300 

Illyria,  Brutus  in,  20;  in 
Octavian's  empire,  50,  53; 
progress  in,  75;  Roman  peril 
from,  120;  attacks  on,  456; 
devastated  by  Attila,  485 

Illyricum,  405,  411,  425,  434, 

454,  469,  474 
India,  133,  283,  302,  325 
Ingenuus,  Emperor,  364 
Inn,  the  river,  90 
Ionian  Islands,  the,  83 
Iran,  Mazdeism  of,  377 
Ireland,  259 
Iron    Gates,     battle    at    the, 

272 
Isis,  157 
Isocrates,  300 
Issus,  battle  at,  336 
Istria,  invasion  of,  90 
Isaurians,  the,  454 
Italia,  392 
Italica,  295 


504 


Index 


Italy,  corruption  in,  13;  ruin 
in,  43;  peace  restored,  44; 
public  works  in,  51,  76,  233, 
254;  literature  in,  66;  ruler 
of  Orient  and  Occident,  94; 
growth  of,  117;  exempted 
from  taxation,  155;  corrup- 
tion in,  198;  legions  from, 
221;  invasion  by  legions 
from  Germany,  232;  a  cen- 
tury of  peace,  233;  prosper- 
ity in,  251;  the  harbours  of, 
275;  the  plague  in,  315;  in- 
vasion by  the  Alemanni, 
365;  Maximian  rules  in,  388; 
provinces  of,  393;  Constans, 
425;  invasion  of  Alaric,  in, 
472,  475 

Ituraea,  159 

lulfa,  49 

lus  Latii,  254 


Japanese,  the,  454 

Jarbiensis,  411 

Jazigi,  the,  317,  384 

Jericho,  palm  groves  of,  48; 
fall  of,  221 

Jerusalem,  159;  massacre  in, 
218;  siege  of,  218,  239,  246; 
the  fall  of,  302;  reconstruc- 
tion of,  304 

Jesus,  the  death  of,  212 

Jewish  religion,  462 

Jews  of  Rome,  158,  211;  revolt 
of  the,  283 

John,  the  primicerius  notario- 
rum,  481 

Jove,  brother  of,  1 58 

Jovian,  the  Emperor,  451; 
death  of,  452 

Jovinus,  478 

Jovius,  385,  389 

Juba,  295 

Judaea,  107,  134,  159,  211; 
revolt  of,  216,  246;  war  in, 
220;  insurrection  in,  304 

Judaism,  2 1 1 

Julia,  9;  wife  of  Agrippa,  86; 


marries  Tiberius,  loi;  scan- 
dal of,  108;  exiled,  108,  138 

Julian  Alps,  the,  462,  464 

Julianus,  429;  made  Caesar, 
437.  438;  proclaimed  Augus- 
tus, 44 1;  received  at  Con- 
stantinople, 443 ;  religious 
troubles  of,  447;  expedition 
to  Persia,  448;  death  of,  450 

Julianus,  Calpurnius,  262 

Julianus,  Didius,  332;  elected 
emperor,  332;  death  of,  335 

Julianus,  Salonius,  291 

Julii,  the,  104 

Julius,  Pope,  432 

Juno,  temple  of,  299 

Jupiter,  statue  of,  401 

Justina,  wife  of  Valentinian  I., 
460;  death  of,  461 

Jutland,  III 

Jutungi,  the,  368 

Juvenal,  326 


Labienus,  Q.,  42,  45 
Lacedaemonians,  the,  456 
Lactantius,  382 
Lacus  Flevo,  the,  97 
Lagidae,   the  dynasty   of  the, 

53 

Lago  Maggiore,  the,  91 

Lago  di  Orta,  91 

Lake  Leman,  93 

Lake  Stymphalos,  299 

Lambffisis,  camp  of,  301 

Langobardi,  the,  iii 

Latium,  Antony  in,  16;  con- 
fiscation in,  30,  145;  Muci- 
anus  in,  242 ;  Alaric  in,  476 

Lavinius,  the  river,  29 

Lavino  River,  29 

Leo  L,  Pope,  486;  Emperor, 
488,  490 

Lepidus,  M.  ^milius,  i;  joins 
Antony,  22;  agreement  with 
Octavius,  27;  the  triumvirs, 
29;  surrenders  three  legions, 
38;  plans  Civil  War,  50;  death 
of,  97 


Index 


505 


Lepontii,    tribes    of    the,    91; 

defeat  of  the,  92 
Leptis,  334 
Lesbos,  136 

Leucas,  fortifications  of,  60 
Lex  de  adulteriis,  the,  88,  105 
Lex  Jtdia,  86,  88,  106,  no 
Lex  de  maiestate,  the,  141,  144, 

257.  264 
Lex    de    maritandis    ordinibus, 

190 
Lex  Pedia,  the,  42 
Lex  de  permutatione   provinci- 

arum,  11,  17 
Lex  sumptuaria,  88 
Lex  Titia,  the,  30,  72 
Liberius,  Pope,  436 
Liberty,  coin  of  the  Genius  of, 

.275 

Licinianus,  Calpumius  Piso, 
.231 

Licinius,  Licinianus,  Emperor, 
405 ;  marries  Constantia,  407; 
defeat  of,  411;  territory 
ceded  to,  411;  death  of,  416; 
420 

Liguria,  22,  23;  revolt  in,  91 

Lingones,  the,  245 

Lippe,  the  river,  98,  113,  127, 
129 

Literature,  Italian,  68;  growth 
of,  270 

Livia,  wife  of  Nero,  41;  mar- 
ries Octavian,  69;  Tiberius, 
son  of,  41,  91;  Drusus,  son 
of,  92;  in  traditional  party, 
107;  death  of,  146;  rever- 
ence for,  178 

Livilla,  wife  of  Drusus,  1 5 1 

Livy,  68,  163,  253 

Locus  Castrorum,  235 

Lollius,  Marcus,  91 

Lucan,  216 

Ltidi  Neroniana,  the,  202,  262 

Ludi  VictoricE  Cessans,  12 

Lugdunensis,  95,  222 

Lugdunum,  162,  293 

Lusitania,  mission  to,  194;  the 
Alani  in,  478 

Lybia,  54,  388 

Lybians,  the,  296 


Lybophoenicians,  the,  296 

Lycia,  annexation  of,  168;  tax- 
ation in,  250 

Lycian  Republics,  33 

Lyons,  162,  293,  325,  338,  435, 
439 

M 

Macedonia,  Governor  of,  lO; 
troops  at,  II,  17;  Antony  in, 
20;  Brutus  commands  in, 
20;  evacuation  of,  32;  falls 
to  Antony,  43;  separated 
from  Greece,  83;  invasion  of, 
90.  363,  367;  Licinius  in,  41 1 ; 
Dalmatiusin,  425;  Constan- 
tius  in,  430,  435;  assigned  to 
the  East,  469 

Mace  Hum,  437 

Macrianus,  M.  Fulvius,  365 

Macrinus,  Marcus  Opellius, 
352;  death  of,  353 

Macro,  commander  of  guard, 
150,  152 

Magna  Graecia,  30 

Magnentius,  434 

Magontiacum,  480 

Maioranus  Flavius  Julius,  488; 
proclaimed  emperor,  488; 
death  of,  489 

Majorinus,  413 

Mammaea,  Julia,  346,  353 

Mantinea,  299 

Marbod,  King,  112;  treaty 
with  Rome,  113 

Marcellinus,  489 

Marcellus,  General,  439 

Marcellus,  theatre  of,  255 

Marcianapolis,  367 

Marcianus,  Emperor,  485 ; 
death  of,  488 

Marcomanni.the,  112,  143,  263, 

317.  358 
Mardiensis,  411 
Maritime  Alps,  the,  91 
Marius,    the  days  of,   29;   the 

wars  of,  37 
Marriage  in  Rome,  87 
Marseilles,  293 
Marsi,  the,  127,  130 


5o6 


Index 


Massilia,  293,  406,  479,  481 
Mauretania,  295,  387,  430,  482, 

484 
Mauri,  the,  283,  295,  319,  453 
Maxentius,  403 ;  defeat  of,  408 
Maximianus,     Emperor,     385; 

at    Milan,    389;    in    Africa, 

397;     abdication     of,     402; 

downfall  of,  408;  death  of, 

410 
Maximin,  Emperor,  359;  death 

of,  361 
Maximinius,   C.   Julius   Verus, 

359 

Maximus,  Magnus,  459;  de- 
feated by  Theodosius,  461; 
death  of,  462 

Maximus,  M.  Clodius  Pupie- 
nus,  360 

Maximus,  Petronius,  487 

Mayence,  359,  480 

Mazdeism,  357,  377 

Media,  Antony  at,  48;  Verus 
invades,  315;  the  fall  of,  356 

Media  Atropatene,  398 

Mediolanum,  365 

Megara,  299 

Merida,  295 

Mesopotamia,    282,    286,    315, 

342,  357,  397,  451 

Messalina,  Empress,  169;  con- 
spiracy of,  171;  death  of, 
177 

Messiah,  coming  of  the,  211 

Messina,  Sextus  in,  50 

Metaurus,  the  river,  181 

Methone,  60 

Metz,  invasion  of,  485 

Milan,  325,  365,  389,  the  edict 
of,  408,  414,  452;  Great 
Council  of,  434,  436;  revolt 
in,  460;  threatened  by  Al- 
aric,  473 

Milo,  the  days  of,  13 

Miltiades,  300 

Minden,  129 

Misenum,  the  pact  of,  42,  44, 
47,  52;  Tiberius  in,  152; 
tragedy  at,  200;  the  fleet  at, 
223,  242 

Mithraism,  377,  427 


Mithras,  378,  390,  398 
Modena,  18 
Moderates,  the,  220 
Moesa,  Julia,  346,  353,  359 
Moesia,    233,    240,    246,    261, 

362,     367,    388,    392,     411, 

415,  453,  485 
Mona,  islet  of,  201,  259 
Monasticism,  467 
Mont  Cenis,  407 
Mopsucrene,  442 
Morava,  the  river,  367,  384 
Mosaic  religion,  217 
Mount  Taurus,  battle  at,  45 
Mucianus,  240,  241,  242,  245 
Munda,  26 

Murcus,  Statius,  33,  35 
Mursa,  battle  of,  435 
Mutina,  the  war  of,  15;  siege 

of,  18,  20;  defeat  at,  33 


N 


Nabataeans,  King  of,  159 

Naissus,  city  of,  367 

Naples,   208;    insurrection    at, 

436 
Narbo,  293 
Narbona,  76,  479 
Narbonne,  76,  293,  479 
Narcissus,  165,  176 
Narseus,  King,  396;  escape  of, 

397,  427 

Naulochus,  battle  at,  50 

Neapolis,  34,  208 

Nemea,  299 

Neoplatonists,  the,  417 

Nepos,  Julius,  490 

Neptune,  temple  to,  299 

Nero,  son  of  Ahenobarbus,  180; 
marries  Octavia,  1 82 ;  elected 
emperor,  184,  187;  rupture 
with  Agrippina,  190;  Orien- 
tal policy  of,  192,  201;  as- 
sassination of  Agrippina,  198 ; 
growing  excesses  of,  201, 
210;  divorces  Octavia,  204; 
marries  Poppsea,  204;  at 
Neapolis,  208;  the  burning 
of  Rome,  210;  in  Greece, 
216,  221;  death  of,  226 


Index 


507 


Nero,  son  of  Germanicus,  144; 

death  of,  146 
Nero,  Otho  assumes  name  of, 

232 
Nero,   Tiberius  Claudius,   41, 

153;  Livia,  wife  of,  69 
Nerva,     M.     Cocceius,     266; 

elected  emperor,  266 ;  adopts 

Traianus,     268;     death     of, 

268 
Nicasa,  battle  at,  336;  council 

at,  452 
Nice,     the    Council    of,     416, 

419,  426,  436,  458 
Nicene    Creed,   the,   430,   433, 

436,  458 
Nicomedia,  Diocletian  at,  389; 

the    palace   at,    399;    Euse- 

bius    of,    427;    Julianus    at, 

437 
Nicopolis,  299 
Niger,     C.     Pescennius,     333; 

revolt    of,    336;    death    of, 

336 
Nile,  the  river,  160 
Nisch,  city  of,  367 
Nisibis,  342,  398 
Nola,   death   of   Augustus   at, 

Noricum,  revolt  in,  90;  con- 
quest of,  92 ;  German  inva- 
sion of,  316;  Licinius  in,  41 1 ; 
divided  by  Theodosius,  469; 
Alaric  receives,  476;  Aetius 
in,  483 

North  Sea,  the,  96,  97,  iii, 
128,  438 

Nova  Carthago,  295,  478 

Numerianus,  372 

Numidia,  loss  of,  482;  re- 
stored to  Rome,  484 

Numidians,  the,  296,  360,  387, 
413,  482 


C) 


Octavia,  daughter  of  Claudius, 
182;  marries  Nero,  182,  190; 
divorced  by  Nero,  204;  death 
of,  205 


Octavia,   wife  of  Antonv,   43, 

48,  53,  55,  58 

Octavian,  5;  heir  of  Caesar,  9; 
quarrel  with  Antony,  10; 
first  excesses  of,  15;  joins 
Brutus,  17;  honours  granted 
to,  18;  at  Bononia,  24;  given 
command,  26 ;  elected  consul, 
27;  recalled  from  Sicily,  33; 
defeat  at  Philippi,  35;  takes 
Spain,  38;  besieges  Perusia, 
40;  at  Brundusium,  43;  war 
against  Sextus,  43,  46,  48; 
becomes  sole  triumvir,  45; 
conquers  Sextus,  50;  quarrel 
with  Antony,  55,  58;  wars 
on  Cleopatra,  59,  63;  An- 
tony's army  joins,  62;  con- 
quers Egypt,  63,  65;  master 
of  the  Republic,  66;  marries 
Livia,  69;  powers  of,  71 ;  given 
title  of  Augustus,  72 

Odenathus,  365,  369 

Oderzo,  316  • 

Odoacer,  491 

Old  Seville,  295 

Olybrius,  489,  490;  proclaimed 
emperor,  490 

Olympic  games,  the,  202 

Opitergium,  316 

Optimus,  Trajan's  title  of,  281 

Orestes,  491 

Oriens,  392 

Orientalism,  of  Antony,  52;  of 
Caligula,  158;  of  Nero,  201, 
222 

Orleans,  invasion  of,  485 

Orontes,  the  river,  456 

Osius,  Bishop,  419 

Osroene,  expedition  to,  337; 
annexation  of,  351 

Ostia,  Claudius  at,  173,  176; 
the  harbour  at,  275;  Alaric 
at  the  port  of,  476 

Ostrogoths,  the,  454,  485;  the 
Huns  conquer  the,  455 

Otho,  M.  Salvius,  194;  Nero's 
friend,  231;  proclaimed  em- 
peror, 232 ;  assumes  name  of 
Nero,  232 ;  death  of,  236 

Ottomans,  the,  454 


508 


Index 


Pacorus,  45,  46 

Pacuvius,  69 

Paetina,  M\ia.,  wife  of  Claud- 
ius, 170 

Pastus,  Caesennius,  206 

Paganism,  persecution  of,  431; 
435.  459".  restoration  of, 
463;  festivals  abolished,  472 

Palatine,  the,  90 

Palestine,  159;  tribes  of,  218; 
invasion  of,  218;  Jews  re- 
bellion in,  283;  Severus  in, 
343;  panic  in,  457;  servitude 
in,  467 

Pallas,  165,  178,  182 

Palma,  Cornelius,  274;  con- 
spiracy of,  286 

Palmyra,  303,  365,  370 

Pamphyha,  168 

Pandataria,  108 

Panegyricus,  274,  284 

Panhellenion,  300 

Pannonia,  rising  in,  90;  pacifi- 
cation of,  113;  peril  from,  1 20; 
Drusus  in,  132;  ratifies  Otho 
as  emperor,  233;  legions  of, 
240;  invaded  by  Germany, 
316;  Severus  proclaimed  em- 
peror, 333 ;  Galerius  rules  in, 
388,397;  Liciniusin,  412;  in- 
vasion by  the  Quadi,  453, 
456;  divided  by  Theodosius, 
469 

Pansa,  Vibius,  21,  23,  26 

Papinian,  346 

Parma,  Antony  at,  24 

Parthamaspates,  King,  283 

Parthenopian  Islands,  the,  145 

Parthia,  campaign  in,  9;  em- 
pire of,  16;  Caesar's  designs 
against,  41,  45;  Syria  in- 
vaded by  Parthians,  42,  45 
Antony  wars  against,  48 
King  Phraates  of,  49,  107 
retreat  of  Antony,  49,  52 
mission  sent  to  Rome,  80 
treaty  with  Rome,  84,  137 
trouble  with,  192;  war  with 
Rome,  198;  agreement  with. 


204;  alliance  with  Dacia, 
272;  King  Chosroes  of,  282; 
King  Parthamaspates,  283; 
Armenia  and  Syria  invaded, 
314;  peace  with,  315;  Meso- 
potamia invaded  by,  342; 
Valerian's     expedition     to, 

364 

Parthomasiris,  King,  282 

Pasides,  165 

Paul  of  Tarsus,  212 

Paulinus,  Suetonius,  201,  235 

Paulus,  the  lawyer,  346 

Paulus,  ^milius,  187,  271 

Pavia,  235,  368,  475,  491 

Peloponnesus,  the,  44,  62 

Pedius,  Consul  Q.,  27 

Pennine  Alps,  the,  234 

Pergamus,  kingdom  of,  65 

Pericles,  299 

Perinthus,  310 

Perseus,  the  war  with,  392 

Persia,  95;  rebellion  of,  356; 
influence  in  Armenia,  364; 
invasion  of  Syria,  364;  war 
with,  372, 386,  396,  480;  King 
Bahram,  386;  King  Narsehi, 
396;  treaty  with  Rome,  397; 
campaign  against,  426;  Con- 
stantius  at  war  with,  432; 
great  expedition  to,  448 

Persian  Gulf,  the,  281 

Pertinax,  Emperor  P.  Hel- 
vius,  331 

Perugia,  40 

Perusia,  war  of,  37,  40,  41 

Petau,  241,  462 

Petovio,  241 

Petovium,  battle  at,  462 

Petra,  city  of,  274;  named  for 
Hadrian,  303 

Petronell,  255 

Petronius,  C,  216 

Petronius,  Titus  Flavius,  219 

Pharaohs,  the,  65 

Pharasmanes,  King,  200 

Pharisee,  the  hypocrisy  of  the, 
212 

Pharsalia,  38,  219 

Phidias,  299 

Philip  the  Arabian,  362 


Index 


509 


Philippi,  battle  of,  32,  34,  36, 

37,  41;  prosperity  of,  299 
Philippics,  the,  3,  18,  20 
Philippopolis,  council  of,  431, 

433 
Philippus,     M.     Julius,     361; 

proclaimed  emperor,  362 
Phocis,  318 

Phoenicia,  48;  panic  in,  457 
Phraataces,  King,  107 
Phraates,  King  of  Parthia,  49; 

son  of,  81 ;  treaty  with  Rome, 

84;  death  of,  107 
Piacenza,  24,  235,  368 
Piave,  the  river,  316 
Piazza  Colonna,  the,  322 
Picts,  the,  314,  453 
Piso,   father-in-law  of   Caesar, 

5;    C.    Calpurnius,    79;    on 

mission    to    the    East,    135; 

quarrel    with     Germanicus, 

137;  prosecution  of,  138,  140; 

death    of,    141;    friends    of, 

209;  the  conspiracy  of,  215, 

224 
Pius,  Antoninus,  310;  death  of, 

313 

Placentia,  24,  235,  368 
Placidia,  Galla,  461,  476,  479, 

480,  485 
Plancina,  wife  of  Piso,  138 
Plancus,  L.  Munatius,  26,  28 
Plato,  299,  314 
Plautianus,  C.  Fulvius,  340 
Plautus,  68 
Pliny  the  younger,   274,   276, 

279,  284 
Po,    the   river,    93,    234,    243, 

335,  407,  460 
Pola,  438 

Polemon,  King,  136,  200 
PoUentia,  473 
Pollenzo,  473 
Pollio,  Asinius,  28 
Polybius,  165 
Pompeians,  Octavian  deserted 

by  the,  16;  army  of  the,  20, 

30 
Pompeianus,  Claudius,  324 
Pompeius,  Sextus,  26,  32,  37, 

42,  44,  46,  50,  53 


Pompey  the  Great,  son  of,  26: 

struggles  of,  68;  consul  and 

proconsul,      72 ;     dictatorial 

powers    of,    81 ;    C.    Cinna, 

grandson  of,  109;  the  era  of, 

201 
Pons  Milvius,  407 
Pontes  Longi,  the,  128 
Pontica,  392 

Pontiffs,  the  college  of,  44 
Pontus,  contingents  from,  48; 

King  Polemon  of,  136,  200; 

division  of,  159,  430 
Porta  Capena,  408 
Porta  Nomentana,  226 
PortcB  CaspicB,  the,  221,  223 
Postumus,  M.  Cassianus,  364; 

emperor,  364 
Pozzuoli,  Cicero  at,  9,  13 
PrcBsides,  the,  392 
Praetorian    Praefect,    the,    323, 

330,  346,  355.  361,  385.  420, 

469 
Primus  Antonio,  241,  261 
Priscus,  Statius,  314 
Probus,  M.  Aurelius,  371 
Procopius,  General,  452,  490 
Propontis,  the,  485 
Provincia  Proconsularis,  484 
Ptolemies,  the  empire  of  the, 

47,   65,    158;   reconstituting 

the  empire,  54 
Ptolemy,  son  of  Antony,   54; 

King    of    Phoenicia,     Syria 

and  Cilicia,  54 
Punic  War,  the  second,  13 
Puteoli,  Cicero  at,  9,  13 
Pyramids,  the,  303 
Pythagoreans,  the,  69 


Q 


Quadi,  the,  263,  317,  453,  456, 

485 
Quadratus,  Ummidius,  193 
Quintilian,  255,  271 


R 

Radagaisus,  473 
Randeia,  206 


510 


Index 


Ravenna,  242,  404,   473,  475, 

485 

Reate,  219;  Domitian  at,  257 

Red  Sea,  the,  274 

Redriaco,  242 

Religions  of  Rome,  376 

Reno  River,  29 

Republic,  the  Augustan,  66 

"Restorers  of  the  Republic," 
161 

Rheetia,  Aetius  in,  483 

Rha3tians,  the,  91;  defeat  of 
the,  92;  German  invasion, 
316;  Maximian  ruler  of  the, 
3S8;  troops  of  the,  474 

Rhenus,  the  river,  29 

Rhine,  the  river,  96,  iii,  245, 

255,  439 
Rhodes,  conquest  of,  33;  Tiber- 
ius in,  102;  taxation  in,  250; 
Germanic  invasion  of,  367 
Ricimer,    General,    461;    slays 

Maioranus,  489 
Rimetalces,  King,  90 
Rimini,  17;  council  of,  441 
Roman  Campagna,  the,  393 
Rome,  the  Third  Civil  War,  i ; 
funeral  of  Caesar,  4;  Caesar's 
son,  8,  879;  De  Officiis  of 
Cicero,  13;  War  of  Mutina, 
15,  22;  tribute  from  Asia,  20; 
war  declared  on  Antony,  20; 
Triumviri  Reipublicas  Con- 
stituendse,  22,  29,  38;  Oc- 
tavius  elected  Consul,  27; 
the  treasury  empty,  29; 
confiscation  of  property,  30; 
the  battle  of  Philippi,  34; 
War  of  Perusia,  37,  40; 
Fulvia  plans  to  govern,  39; 
treaty  of  Brundusium,  42; 
treaty  of  Tarentum,  45,  46; 
Antony  and  Cleopatra,  47; 
war  against  Parthians,  48; 
dissolution  of  Triumvirate, 
50;  public  works  under  Oc- 
■  tavian,  5 1 ;  donations  of  Alex- 
andria, 52,  54;  Actium,  59, 
60;  war  against  Cleopatra, 
63;  Octavian's  triumph,  65; 
Restoration   of   the    Repub- 


lic, 66;  Livy's  History  of,  68; 
finances  of,  72,  74;  first  war 
of  Augustus,  76;  crisis  of, 
23  B.C.,  76;  tribute  from 
Gaul,  78;  mission  from 
Parthia,  80;  famine  in, 
8 1 ;  Augustus  in  the  East, 
82;  treaty  with  Parthia,  85; 
Legislation  of  18  B.C.,  85; 
Gaul  and  Germany,  89, 
90;  a  mixed  empire,  94; 
Drusus  invades  Germany, 
100;  conspiracy  of  C.  Cinna, 
109;  Augustus  and  Tiberius, 
no;  death  of  Augustus,  115; 
election  of  Tiberius,  120; 
war  on  Germany,  125;  Ger- 
man policy  of  Tiberius,  130; 
mission  of  Germanicus,  134; 
alliance  with  Parthia,  137; 
death  of  Germanicus,  139; 
the  trial  of  Piso,  141;  death 
of  Tiberius,  152;  Caligula 
and  Claudius,  153;  election 
of  Caligula,  155;  election  of 
Claudius,  161;  conspiracy  of 
42  A.D.,  164;  conquest  of 
Britain,  166;  conspiracy  of 
Messalina,  171;  poisoning 
of  Claudius,  184;  election  01 
Nero,  184,  187;  restoration 
of  the  Republic,  187;  Nero's 
Oriental  policy,  192;  war 
with  Armenia  and  Parthia, 
198;  insurrection  of  Britain, 
200,  207;  excesses  of  Nero, 
201;  Ludi  Neroniana,  202; 
magnificence  of,  203;  agree- 
ment with  Parthia,  204;  the 
burning  of,  208;  the  Chris- 
tians, 211;  the  rebuilding  of, 
214;  conspiracy  of  Piso,  215; 
war  in  Judea,  219;  election  of 
Galba,  225;  the  reign  of  Gal- 
ba,  227;  revolt  of  legions  of 
Germany,  230;  Vitellius  pro- 
claimed emperor,  23 1 ;  death 
of  Galba,  232;  Otho  pro- 
claimed emperor,  232;  inva- 
sion by  German  legions,  232 ; 
death  of  Otho,  236;  Vitellius 


Index 


511 


Rome — Continued 

proclaimed  emperor,  237 ; 
victory  of  Vespasian,  240; 
death  of  Vitellius,  243;  the 
Flavians,  244;  Emperor  Ves- 
pasian, 244;  reform  of  the 
Senate,  251;  death  of  Vespa- 
sian, 256;  Titus  elected  em- 
peror, 256;  death  of  Titus, 
257  ;  Emperor  Domitian,  257; 
conquest  of  Britain,  258; 
successes  in  Germany,  259; 
the  Dacian  War,  261,  272; 
Republic  of  Trajan,  266, 
269;  Emperor  Nerva,  268; 
Emperor  Trajan,  268;  pro- 
vince of  Dacia,  273;  pro- 
vince of  Arabia  Petraea, 
274;  wars  in  the  East,  281; 
Armenia  and  Mesopotamia, 
provinces  of,  282;  Jewish  re- 
bellion, 283;  death  of  Tra- 
jan, 283;  Emperor  Hadrian, 
284;  reforms,  288;  travels 
of  Hadrian,  291;  indus- 
tries, 293;  Hadrian's  return 
to,  301 ;  great  buildings,  301; 
Hadrian's  second  journey, 
301 ;  insurrection  in  Judaea, 
304;  death  of  Hadrian,  307; 
Antoninus  Pius,  310;  Mar- 
cus Aurelius,  313;  the  Orien- 
tal war,  314;  first  German 
invasion,  315;  suppression 
of  invaders,  318;  revolt  of 
Cassius,  319;  persecution  of 
Christians,  321;  statue  to 
M.  Aurelius,  322;  death  of 
M.  Aurelius,  323;  growth 
and  industry  of,  325;  the 
height  of  prosperity,  329; 
Emperor  Commodus,  329; 
Emperor  Pertinax,  33 1 ;  death 
of,  332;  Emperor  Didius 
Julianus,  332;  death  of  Ju- 
Uanus,  335;  Emperor  Sep- 
timius  Severus,  335;  con- 
quest of  the  East,  337;  the 
reign  of  Severus,  339,  346; 
war  with  Parthia,  342;  the 
absolute  monarchy,  348;  the 


great  crisis,  350;  the  sons  of 
Severus,  350;  Emperor  Cara- 
calla,  351;  Macrinus  pro- 
claimed emperor,  352;  Em- 
peror Heliogabalus,  354; 
Emperor  Alexander  Severus, 
354;  Emperor  Maximin,359; 
Emperor  Gordianus,  360;  an- 
archy in,  361 ;  Emperor  Phil- 
ippus,  362;  Emperor  Decius, 
362;  Emperor  Gallus,  363; 
Emperor  ^milianus,  363 ; 
Emperor  Valerian,  363;  Em- 
peror Postumus,  364;  Em- 
peror Gallienus,  364;  the 
Gothic  peril,  366;  Emperor 
Claudius,  367;  Emperor  Au- 
relian,  368 ;  loss  of  Dacia,  368 ; 
the  walls  of,  369;  Emperor 
Tacitus,  371;  Emperor  Pro- 
bus,  371;  Emperor  Carus, 
371;  Emperor  Diocletianus, 
372;  financial  troubles,  374; 
Greek  and  Roman  culture, 
375;  religions  of  Rome,  376; 
Christianity,  378;  reforms  of 
Diocletian,  384;  Emperor 
Maximianus,  385;  Armenia 
again  under,  387;  the  Te- 
trarchy,  387;  raids  of  the 
Saracens,  387;  Carausius, 
387;  the  Caesars,  388:  Maxi- 
mian  rules  in,  388;  new  abso- 
lute monarchy,  389,  391;  re- 
form of  the  coinage,  395; 
the  great  Persian  war,  396; 
treaty  with  Persia,  397;  per- 
secution of  the  Christians, 
398;  abdication  of  the  Au- 
gusti,  401;  Constantine  the 
Great,  403;  Arch  of  Con- 
stantine, 408;  triumph  of 
Christianity,  409;  the  new 
coinage,  411;  the  Donatist 
question,  413;  the  defeat  of 
Licinius,  416;  the  Council  of 
Nice,  416,  419;  religious 
complications,  419:  new  or- 
ganization of  the  Empire, 
420;  new  capital  at  Byzan, 
tium,  424;  religious  struggles- 


512 


Index 


Rom  e —  Cont  inued 

429;  the  Constantiniani,  430; 
the  Catholic  Church,  43 1 ; 
the  Schismatic  Church,  434; 
the  Council  of  Milan,  436; 
Julian  in  Gaul,  438;  the 
Pagan  reaction,  442;  Em- 
peror Julian,  443 ;  expedition 
to  Persia,  448;  German 
attack  on,  453;  Gratian  and 
Valentinian  II.,  454;  devas- 
tation by  the  Vandals,  456; 
Emperor  Theodosius,  457; 
the  Catholic  reaction,  457; 
the  Arian  revival,  459;  con- 
flict between  Church  and 
State,  460;  internal  crisis,464, 
468 ;  ruin  and  decay,  465 ;  the 
catastrophe,  469, 487 ;  division 
of  East  and  West,  469,  472; 
siege  of  Milan,  473;  Ger- 
man invasion,  473;  besieged 
by  Alaric,  476,  477;  loss  of 
Western  Europe,  477,  480; 
defeat  of  the  barbarians, 
479;  the  Eastern  Empire, 
480;  the  Vandals,  480;  loss 
of  Africa,  482;  terms  with 
Genseric,  483;  invasion  of 
the  Huns,  484;  devastation 
by  Attila,  485;  plundered 
by  Genseric,  487;  destruc- 
tion of  the  fleet,  488 ;  triumph 
of  Genseric,  490 
Rossolani,  the,  317 
Roumanians,  the,  261,  273 
Rufus,  Fa^nius,  216 
Rufus,  Lucius  Virginius,  223; 
proclaimed  emperor,  223 ; 
displaced  by  Galba,  227; 
refuses  the  empire,  237 
Rufinus,  469;  death  of,  471 
Ruhr,  the  river,  127,  130 
Russia,  aristocracy  of,  135 


Sabina,  Poppaga,   193;  marries 

Nero,  204 
Sabinus,  Flavius,  219;  death  of, 

243 


Sabinius,  Furius,  361 

Sabinus,  Julius,  245 

Sabinus,      Nymphidius,      224; 

death  of,  228 
St.  Ambrose,  Bishop,  459 
St.  Angelo,  the  castle  of,  301 
vSt.  Augustine,  382 
St.  Bernard,  26 
St.  Jerome,  456 
St.  Justin,  martyrdom  of,  322 
S.  Vittore  ad  Corpus,  460 
Salamanca,  295 
Salasis,  valley  of  the,  76,  78 
Salii,  the,  485 
Salina,  491 
Sallustius,  442 
Salmantica,  295 
Salona,  Diocletian  at,  401,  410 
Sapaudia,  483 
vSapor     I.    King,    398;     Pensia 

under,  361 
Sapor     II.,     of     Persia,     427; 

invasions  by,  431,  441 
Saracens,  the,  387,  464 
Saragossa,  295 
Sardica,  368;  Council  of,  431, 

432 
Sardinia,     Sextus    given,     44; 

Maximian  in,  388 
Sarmatians,  the,  90,  208,  221, 

246,  283,  317,  365,  387,  425, 

453,  456 
Sassanids,  the,  356,  386 
Saturninus,  141,  144 
Sava,  the  river,  411,  461 
Savoy,  483 

Saxons,  the,  364,  386,  453 
Schismatic  Church,  the,  431; 

origin  of  the,  434 
Scipio,  187.  271 
Scordisci,  the,  90 
Scotland,  259,  346 
Scots,  the,  453 
Scribonianus,  Furius,  166 
Scutari,  416 
Scythia,  456,  485 
Scythians,  the,  208,  221,  317 
Segestes,  126;  liberation  of,  127 
Sejanus,  .^lius,    144;    rise  of, 

146;  fall  of,  148;  intrigues  of, 

174 


Index 


513 


Seleucia,  burning  of,  315; 
invasion  of,  372 

Seleucia  Isaurica,  441 

Seleucid  monarchy,  the.  217, 
356 

Selinus,  283 

Seneca,  181,  187,  188,  192, 
198,  216 

Sens,  siege  of,  439 

Severus,  Alexander,  354,  359 

Severus,  Augustus,  402,  404 

Severus,  Libius,  489 

Severus,  L.  Septimius,  333; 
elected  emperor,  335;  con- 
quest of  the  East,  337;  Septi- 
mius Bassianus,  son  of,  338; 
the  reign  of,  339;  Julia 
Domna,  wife  of,  339;  war 
with  Parthia,  342;  title  of 
Dominus,  345;  Geta,  son  of, 
345;  death  of,  346;  impor- 
tance of  the  reign  of,  346 

Severus,  Sextus  Julius,  305 

Sicambri,  the,  99 

Sicily,  great  domains  of,  30; 
Sextus  in,  33;  Sextus  gains, 
44;  Octavian  lands  in,  50; 
Genseric  attacks,  484;  Van- 
dals in,  488 

Sigericus,  479 

Silius,  P.,  91,  92;  conspiracy  of, 

171.  175.  177 
Silvagni,  Umberto,  174 
Sinai,  274 
Sindones,  the,  168 
Singara,  441 

Sinuessa,  Claudius  at,  185 
Sirmium,  368,  385;  Galerius  in, 

389;  the  Constantiniani  in, 

430 
Siscia,  battle  at,  461 
Siseck,  461 

Smyrna,  conference  at,  32 
Socrates,  299 
Scemia,  Julia,  346 
Sofia,  368,  432 
Sol  Invictus,  cult  of,  378 
Solway  Firth,  the,  294 
Sophene,  240 
Sophocles,  299 
Sosius,  Consul  C,  56 


Spain,  Octavian  takes,  38;  in 
Octavian 's  empire,  50;  Oc- 
tavian proconsul  in,  71;  Gal- 
ba  elected  by  legions  of,  230; 
aristocracy  in,  253;  Latin 
citizenship,  254;  Hadrian 
in,  294;  invasion  by  the 
Mauri,  319;  Maximian  in, 
388;  Constantine  in,  425; 
Julian  in,  438;  Maximus  in, 
460;  Vandal  invasion  of, 
478,  482 

Sparta,  366 

Spoils  of  War,  the,  16,  65,  77, 

277 

Statianus,  Oppius,  48 

Stilicho,  the  Vandal,  469;  de- 
feats Alaric,  473 ;  death  of,  475 

Stoics,  the,  69,  313 

Strasbourg,  439 

Suetonius,  quoted,  173,  176 

Suevi,  the,  100,  263,  478 

Sulla,  29;  wars  of,  37;  the 
reforms  of,  121;  the  great 
State  of,  187 

Sulpicianus,  332 

Sun  God,  the,  353,  390,  399 

Syria,  governor  of,  10;  Cas- 
sius  raises  army  in,  25;  Par- 
thians  raid,  42,  45;  falls  to 
Antony,  43;  Parthia  cedes, 
85;  under  Rome,  134;  terri- 
tory annexed  to,  134;  divided 
by  Caligula,  159;  troubles 
in,  218,  266;  Mucianus, 
governor  of,  240;  Hadrian 
in,  302;  invaded  by  Parthia, 
314;  attack  on,  357;  invaded 
by  Persia,  364;  Roman  tri- 
umphs in,  370;  Diocletian 
in,  388;  rebellion  in,  399; 
Constantius  in,  425 

Syrtes  the  great,  54 


Tabriz,  49 

Tacfarinas,  143 

Tacitus,  hostility  to  Tiberius, 
141,  143;  quoted,  147,  173, 
176,  184,  196,  211,  271 


514 


Index 


Tacitus,  M.  Claudius,  371 

Tanarus,  the  river,  473 

Tapae,  272 

Tarentum,  treaty  of,  45,  46 

Tarraco,  295 

Tarragona,  295 

Tarraconensis,  223 

Tarsus,  212;  Constantine  at, 
442;  the  ashes  of  Julian  at, 
452 

Taxes,  levying,  44;  remitting 
the,  51;  collecting  the,  90; 
Tiberius  imposes,  1 1 1 ;  bur- 
den under  Nero,  215,  249; 
Vespasian  increases  the,  249 ; 
under  Hadrian,  308;  Cara- 
calla  increases  the,  350; 
oppressed  by,  466 

Temesitheus,  C.  Furius,  361 

Tencteri,  the,  99 

Terence,  69 

TertuUian,  327,  381 

Tetrarchy,  the,  387 

Tetricus,  370 

Teutoburg,  forest  of,  113,  127, 

131 

Thames,  the  river,  167 
Thasus,  Island  of,  34 
Theatres  of  Rome,    133,    147, 

155,  208,  238,  255 
Thebaid,    monasteries   of  the, 

436 
Theodoric,  King,  486,  488 
Theodosius  II.,  475;  death  of, 

485 

Theodosius,  Emperor,  457, 480; 
recognizes  Maximus,  460; 
Maximus  defeated  by,  462 ; 
death  of,  464 

Theodosius,  Flavius,  453 

Thervingi,  the,  454 

Theseus,  300 

Thessalonica,  299,  325,  462 

Thessaly,  83,  485 

Thirty  Tyrants,  the,  366 

Thrace,  revolt  in,  90;  Ger- 
manicus  in,  136;  taxation  in, 
250;  the  Goths  in,  363,  415, 
455;  Galerius  rules  in,  388; 
Constantine  in,  425;  Con- 
stantius  in,  430;  devastation 


by  the  Goths,  470;  laid  waste 
by  Attila,  485 

Thucydides,  299 

Tiber,  the  river,  6;  flood  of  the, 
8 1 ;  Vitellius  drowned  in  the, 
.243 

Tiberius,  Emperor,  41;  sent 
against  the  Rhaetians,  91; 
sent  to  Pannonia,  98;  mar- 
ries Julia,  Id;  conspiracy 
of  Julia,  104;  retires  to 
Rhodes,  105;  returns  to 
Rome,  108;  becomes  tri- 
bune, 109;  in  Germany,  iii; 
elected  emperor,  118,  120; 
German  policy  of,  130;  Dru- 
sus,  son  of,  132;  method 
of  government,  132,  143; 
speech  by,  139;  at  Capri, 
144;  death  of  Drusus,  son 
of,  144;  exile  at  Capri,  145; 
isolates  Sejanus,  149;  death 
of,  152 

Tiberius,  son  of  Drusus,  153; 
death  of,  162 

Tibur,  Hadrian's  villa  at,  301, 
306 

Ticinum,  235 

TigeUinus,  204,  216,  224 

Tigranes,  King,  84,  200,  205, 
207 

Tigranocerta,  200,  205 

Tigris,  the  river,  282,  315,  398, 

427.  451 
Tilsafata,  452 
Tiridates,  King,  81,   192,  200, 

.206,  387,  398,  427 
Titus,  son   of  Vespasian,  246; 

conquers  Judaea,  247 ;  elected 

emperor,     256;     death     of, 

257 
Tivoli,  301 

Tivurtium,  battle  at,  338 
Tolosa,  293,  479 
Torrismondus,  486 
Tortona,  24 
Toulouse,  293,  479 
Traditionalist  party,  the,  107, 

no,  307 
Transalpine  Gaul,  19 
Traianus,  M.  Ulpius,  268 


Index 


515 


Trajan,  the  republic  of,  266; 
Emperor,  268;  war  with 
Dacia,  272;  Civil  adminis- 
tration of,  274;  the  Forum  of, 
275;  finances  under,  277; 
altars  to,  280;  Christianity 
under,  281;  title  of  Optimus, 
281;  at  Antioch,  282;  death 
of,  283 ;  the  arch  of,  408 

Transylvania,  454 

Trentino,  the,  168 

Treveri,  Galerius  in,  389; 
fortifications  of,  439 

Treves,  389,  439 

Treviri,  the,  245 

Tr^voux,  338 

Triumviri  ReipubliccB  Constitu- 
endcE,  22,  29;  fall  of  the,  37, 
56 

Triumvirs,  the,  22,,  29,  37,  38, 
52,  56 

Troyes,  486 

Trumpli,  the,  91 

Tulliassi,  the,  168 

Turcilingi,  the,  485 

Turks,  the,  454 

Tusnelda,  wife  of  Arminius, 
127 

Tutor,  Julius,  245 

Tyana,  369 

Tyne,  the  river,  294 

Tyre,  the  Council  of,  426, 
430 

Tyrrhene  Sea,  the,  275 


U 


Ubii,  the,  180 
Ulpian,  the  lawyer,  346 
Ulysses,  travels  of,  306 
Urgulanilla,    Plautia,    wife    of 
Tiberius,  170 


Vada  Sabbatia,  24 

Vado,  24 

Val  d'Aosta,  the,  26,  76 

Val  Camonica,  the,  90 

Val  Trompia,  91 

Valens,     Emperor,     452 ; 


presses  civil  war,  454;  death 
of,  456 

Valens,  Fabius,  234;  flight  of, 
242 

Valentinian  I.,  Emperor,  452; 
death  of,  454;  Justina,  wife 
of,  460 

Valentinian  II.,  Emperor,  453; 
converted  to  Catholicism, 
46 1 ;  death  of,  463 

Valentinianus,  Flavins  Placi- 
dus,  480;  proclaimed  Augus- 
tus, 481;  title  of  Valentin- 
ian III.,  48 1;  makes  treaty 
with  Genseric,  483;  death  of, 
487 

Valerianus,  P.  Licinius,  362; 
emperor,  363;  Gallienus,  son 
of,  364 

ValHa,  479,  488 

Vallum  Hadriani,  the,  294 

Valtellina,  the,  90 

Vandals,  the,  368,  387,  456, 
474;  invade  Spain,  478,  482; 
King  Genseric,  482;  Rome 
plundered  by  the,  487 

Vandalusia,  478 

Varna,  367 

Varro,  works  of,  253 

Varus,  Quintilius,  107;  dis- 
aster in  Germany,  112,  127; 
death  of,  114;  defeat  of,  368 

Vermonetes,  the,  90 

Venus,  temple  of,  301,  304 

Vercingetorix,  49,  113,  129 

Verona,  325,  362 

Verus,  Lucius  .^Elius,  313; 
sent  to  Syria,  314;  death  of, 
322;     Commodus,     son     of, 

323 

Verus,    Marcus    Annius,    306, 

313 

Verus,  L.  Ceionius  Commodus, 

306,  313 
Vesontium,  battle  at,  223 
Vespasianus,  Titus  Flavius, 
218;  at  Siege  of  Jerusalem, 
218,  239;  the  victory  of,  240; 
proclaimed  emperor,  240, 244 ; 
reforms  of,  248;  elected 
Censor,  252;  death  of,  256 


516 


Index 


Vesta,  the  temple  of,  31 
Vestal   Virgins,    the,    58,    156, 

I  70,  258 
Vetranio,  434 
Via  Amelia,  the,  21,  29 
Via  Egnatia,  34 
Via  Flaminia,  476 
Via  Ostiensis,  the,  224 
Via  Sacra,  the,  343,  408 
Vicarii,  the,  392 
Vicennalia,     festival     of     the, 

400 
Victory,     the     altar     of,     460, 

463' 
Victuali,  the,  317 
Vidauban,  25 
Vienna,  255,  293,  323 
Vienne,  293 
Viennensis,  392 
Vindelicians,  the,  91;  defeat  of 

the,  92 
Vindex,  C.  Julius,  222,  227 
Vindobona,  255,  323 
Vinicianus,  Annius,  166 
Vipacco,  the  river,  464 
Virgil,    65;   the  poem  of,    69; 

works  of,  253 
Visigoths,   the,    454;   kingdom 

of   the,    480;   in    Aquitania, 

483 
Vitellius,  Aulus,  231;  Gaul  and 
Spain   decide   for,    233;    in- 


vades Italy,  234;  proclaimed 
emperor,  237;  defeat  of,  242; 
death  of,  243 

Vocontii,  the,  234 

Vologeses,     King,     192,     207, 

314.  342 
Vonones,  King,  134,  137 

W 

Wahaballath,  369 
Weser,     the    river,     96,     113, 
129 


Xenophon,  184 

Y 

York,  346,  403 
Yssel,  the  river,  97 


Zealots,  the,  217,  220 
Zeno,  King,  136 
Zenobia,  Queen,  369 
Zinta,  398 
Zoroaster,  357 
Zuiderzee,  the,  97,  98 


A 
Short  History  of  Rome 

From  the  Foundation  of   the  City  to  the  Fall  of 
the  Ejnpire  of  the  West 

By  Guglielmo  Ferrero 
Assisted  by  Corrado  Barbagallo 

Two  Volumes.     8" 

Volume  I.  The  Monarchy  and  the  Republic,  from 
the  Foundation  of  the  City  to  the  Death  of 
Jidius  Caesar,  754  B.C,-44  B.C.  Volume  11. 
The  Elmpire 

The  leading  ideas  of  the  work  are  those  which 
Ferrero  has  developed  in  his  Greatness  and  Decline 
of  Rome;  and  the  method  of  setting  forth  his  facts  is 
the  same  too.  Only  the  sketches  are  necessarily 
shorter,  the  narrative  more  concise  and  swifter,  as  is 
proper  in  a  book  intended  for  the  use  of  classes. 

The  most  novel  feature  in  the  author's  method 
of  exposition  is,  that  instead  of  that  method  being,  as 
is  the  case  in  almost  all  textbooks,  diffuse,  it  is  organic. 
This  work  does  not  contain  a  piecemeal  account  of 
wars,  reforms,  political  crises,  the  progress  of  civiliza- 
tion and  of  culture  and  economic  developments  as 
isolated  facts.  On  the  contrary,  the  facts  are  brought 
into  relationship,  with  the  result  that  a  well-rounded 
and  organic  impression  is  conveyed.  It  is  the  method 
which  Sig.  Ferrero  pursued  in  his  large  work  and  to 
which  in  part  that  work  owes  its  success. 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


PROBLEMS  OF  PEACE 
IN  EUROPE 

From  the  Holy  Alliance  to  The  League  of  Nations 

By 
QUGLIELMO  FERRERO 

12°. 

The  autkor  recalls  that  he  has  "  had  the  good 
fortune  to  mature  his  mind  in  America  for  the 
understanding  of  these  historical  events" ;  he  re- 
cites the  stirring  history  which  has  now  reached 
its  climax,  from  the  French  Revolution  to  the 
immeasurable  maelstrom  of  the  recent  crisis. 
Chapter  headings:  "To  the  American  People," 
"The  French  Revolution  and  the  Austrian  Em- 
pire," "The  League  and  the  Peace  of  the 
Dynasties,  1815-1848,"  "The  Revolution  of 
1848,"  "The  Great  Surprise,"  "The  Germanic 
Triumph  (1848-1870),"  "The  German  Peace," 
"From  the  Holy  Alliance  to  the  League  of 
Nations." 


Q.  P.  Putnam's  5ons 


New  York  London 


Between  the  Old  World 
and  the  New 

A  Moral  and  Philosophical  Contrast 

By 

Guglielmo  Ferrero 

8°.     $2.50  net.      ^y  mail,   $2.70 

This  book  combines  the  qualities  of  a  romance, 
a  dialogue,  a  record  of  travel,  and  an  analysis  of 
certain  philosophical  and  sociological  problems. 
The  author  has  undertaken  to  represent  the  conflict 
between  the  two  worlds — not  between  Europe  and 
America  only,  but  between  the  ancient  limited 
civilizations  still  surviving  in  so  many  traditions,  and 
the  aspirations,  the  ambitions,  and  the  passions  of 
this  new  civilization,  which  aim  at  sweeping  away 
all  limits. 

The  title  is  explained  by  the  fact  that  the 
impressions  and  judgments  of  the  old  world  and  the 
new,  and  the  discussions  of  men  and  of  things  with 
which  the  pages  of  the  book  are  filled,  take  form 
upon  the  high  seas  which  divide  the  two  hemispheres. 

G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


I 


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